Theresa May: With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the disaster at Grenfell Tower. I apologise to the Leader of the Opposition for the short notice he has had of this statement. In the hour before making it, I received an important update, which I felt was essential to bring to the attention of the House this morning.
What happened in the early hours of last Wednesday morning was one of the most unimaginable tragedies that our country has seen in many years. As of this morning, 79 people have been confirmed dead or listed as missing presumed dead, and with work still ongoing to recover the bodies, sadly the death toll may rise further.
We already know that many children are among the dead and that in some cases whole families perished. Those who survived have lost loved ones, friends, neighbours and, in many cases, everything they own. It should never have happened. In a few moments, I shall say how we will discover why it did, but, as I said yesterday, that initial failure was then compounded by the fact that the support on the ground in the initial hours was not good enough. As Prime Minister, I have apologised for that second failure and taken responsibility for doing what we can to put it right.
On my first visit to north Kensington, I met the emergency services. These extraordinary men and women put their lives on the line in an effort to save others, and my first responsibility was to check that they had all the resources they needed. I then visited Chelsea and Westminster hospital, where I met some of the most seriously injured survivors—it was from that experience that I decided to have an emergency fund. I also met a group of residents in Kensington whom I then invited to Downing Street last weekend. I returned to Kensington again last night to hear directly from them about the progress that we are making. What became clear very quickly was that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea could not cope, and it is right that the chief executive officer has now resigned. It is also why I set up the Grenfell Tower recovery taskforce, which I have been chairing personally.
This is about not just the steps that we take in the first few weeks, but a lasting commitment that we make to supporting the affected families, long after the television cameras have gone. Let me set out in detail the steps that we are taking to support the victims and to rehouse those who have lost their homes.
On Friday morning, the Government established a central command centre under the leadership of John Barradell, the chief executive of the City of London and former lead for London local government on resilience, and Eleanor Kelly, chief executive of the London borough of Southwark. On behalf of the whole House I thank John and his team for all the work that they are doing.
I also pay tribute to the London boroughs for their fantastic response, including a number of chief executives who are currently working at the command centre, as well as the Mayor of London and leading figures from a number of councils from outside London. I thank the army of volunteers who stepped in to provide shelter, sustenance, comfort and practical support. I also thank  the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Ministers for Housing and Planning, for London and for Policing and the Fire Service for the work that they have been doing.
Currently, there are around 600 people working on the site and in the immediate area to provide support to the victims. The Westway sports centre has been transformed into an emergency community hub, staffed by 40 officials from six Government Departments. Those officials are making sure that people have essential documents such as driving licences and passports, which are fundamental to them carrying on with their lives. They have also been joined by experts from organisations such as Transport for London, Citizens Advice and the Red Cross, NHS mental health staff, nurses, care managers, and a GP. Anyone affected by the blaze can walk in and access the support they need, and so far there have been almost 700 visits to the centre.
The centre’s on-the-ground work is supplemented by the victim support unit, whose emergency helpline provides a single point of contact for victims who need to deal with multiple Government services in the wake of the disaster. Each family whose home was destroyed is receiving a £5,000 down payment from the emergency fund so they can buy food, clothes and other essentials, and outreach workers are seeking to make sure everyone gets the money they are entitled to. We are also paying all additional adults over 16 in these households £500 in cash. Other cash payments are being paid out by the council on a discretionary basis, for example to those whose home has been severely impacted but not permanently destroyed. As of midday on Wednesday we had made payments of more than £700,000.
It is absolutely essential that people understand they can keep the money they receive; these grants are not loans and they will not be expected to repay a single penny. Neither are they waiving any legal rights as a result of accepting this financial help. The payments will be disregarded for means-tested welfare payments, so no one in receipt of benefits will see their benefits cut if they accept emergency support. I would like to reassure people that we will not use this tragic incident as a reason to carry out immigration checks on those involved or on those providing vital information to identify victims or those assisting with the criminal investigation. We will make sure that all victims, irrespective of their immigration status, can access the services they need, including healthcare and accommodation.
In terms of local schools, Kensington Aldridge Academy, the school right next door to the tower, remains closed. However, all its pupils have already been accommodated at other schools in the area. The Department for Education is working with Ofqual to ensure that children who are sitting their GCSEs receive an appropriate exam dispensation and specialist counselling has been offered to local schoolchildren and also to teachers affected by the fire.
Turning to re-housing, 151 homes were destroyed in the fire, most in the tower itself but also several in the immediate vicinity. All those who have lost their homes have been offered emergency hotel accommodation, and all will be offered rehousing within three weeks. Already, 164 suitable properties have been identified and they are being checked and made ready for people to move into. In the longer term, everyone whose home  was destroyed will be guaranteed a new home on the same terms as the one they lost. Sixty-eight of those will be in a brand-new low-rise block that has just been built by Berkeley Homes. The developer has generously offered to turn over the entire block at cost price. Contractors are on site now, working 24/7 to speed up fit-out so that the first families can move in this summer.
Within the wider cordon area, many more homes were damaged by smoke or water or have lost gas, heating and hot water. Emergency hotel accommodation is available for anyone who does not want to remain in a damaged property and more than 100 hotel rooms have already been provided. We are also putting in place practical support to help accelerate necessary repairs and yesterday drew on expertise from the Army to assist with this.
Some survivors have said that they want to leave the local area, and we will of course support that and help them find a home elsewhere. But I want to be absolutely clear: nobody is being forced to move somewhere they do not want to go, and if any hon. Member thinks they know of anyone being treated in this way they should contact my office in Downing Street with the details.
As the scale of the tragedy became clear we quickly decided there had to be an independent public inquiry. As I said to the House yesterday, it will be chaired by a judge to get to the truth about what happened and who was responsible, and to provide justice for the victims and their families who suffered so terribly. All those with an interest—including survivors and victims’ families—will be consulted about the terms of reference, and we will pay for legal representation for those affected. Listening to survivors last night, it also became clear that they want support to come together as a group to have their voices heard, and the Government will play our part in helping them to do so.
For too long residents have been overlooked and ignored. We will ensure that they are involved in every step of this process. No stone will be left unturned in this inquiry, and there will be nowhere for any guilty parties to hide. I am clear that we cannot wait for ages to learn the immediate lessons, so I expect that the chair of the inquiry will want to produce an interim report as early as possible.
I know that many others living in tall residential buildings will have concerns about their safety after what happened at Grenfell. All social landlords have been instructed to carry out additional fire safety checks on tower blocks, and to ensure that the appropriate safety and response measures are in place. This is being done in co-operation with local fire and rescue services. We have also taken steps to make private landlords aware and have made our checking facilities available to them for free.
The House should of course be careful when it comes to speculating about what caused the fire, but the Government have arranged to test cladding in all relevant tower blocks as a precaution. Shortly before I came to the Chamber, I was informed that a number of these tests have come back as combustible. The relevant local authorities and local fire services have been informed. As I speak, they are taking all possible steps to ensure that buildings are safe and to inform affected residents. Immediately after this statement, the Department for Communities and Local Government will contact any MPs whose constituents are affected, and the Communities Secretary will provide a further update later today.
We can test more than 100 buildings a day, and the results come within hours. I urge any landlord who owns a building of this kind to send samples for testing as soon as possible. Any results will be communicated immediately to local authorities and local fire services. Landlords have a legal obligation to provide safe buildings. Where they cannot do that, we expect alternative accommodation to be provided. We cannot and will not ask people to live in unsafe homes.
It is clear that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was not able to cope with the scale of the tragedy, so we will develop a new strategy for resilience in major disasters, which could include a new civil disaster response taskforce that can help at times of emergency.
Finally, we must learn some of the lessons of this and previous disasters where bereaved families have not had the support they need, so we will introduce an independent public advocate for public disasters—a strong independent voice for victims, acting on behalf of bereaved families and supporting them at public inquests and inquiries.
In the past week, a lot of remarkable people have gone above and beyond to help deal with the fire and its aftermath. First and foremost, of course, are the incredible men and women of the emergency services who did so much to save so many lives. I cannot imagine the kind of bravery it takes to run into a burning building and head upstairs when any normal person would be heading for the exits. We have also seen sterling work from people across the public sector including teachers, nurses, staff from various local authorities and civil servants, who are doing all they can to help. We have seen incredible acts of generosity from private businesses, and we have seen the people of this great city and this great country stepping up to help in any way they can: donating money, clothes, toys and food, volunteering their time and so much more.
Above all, I pay tribute to the people of Kensington. They have opened their hearts and homes to people affected by the fire, coming together and showing what a real community looks like. The selfless actions of local people and the courage and resilience of the survivors should give us all pause for thought.
Right now, our focus is on supporting the victims, finding homes for those made homeless and making sure that the country’s housing stock is as safe as possible. But as we move forwards, we must also recognise that for too long in our country, under Governments of both colours, we simply have not given enough attention to social housing, and that this is actually a symptom of an even more fundamental issue.
It should not take a disaster of this kind for us to remember that there are people in Britain today living lives that are so far removed from those that many here in Westminster enjoy. In this tower—just a few miles from the Houses of Parliament and in the heart of our great city—people live a fundamentally different life, do not feel the state works for them and are therefore mistrustful of it. So, long after the TV cameras have gone and the world has moved on, let the legacy of this awful tragedy be that we resolve never to forget these people and instead to gear our policies and our thinking towards making their lives better and bringing them into the political process. It is our job as a Government and as a Parliament to show that we are listening and  that we will stand up for them. That is what I am determined we should do. I commend this statement to the House.

John Bercow: I am keen to accommodate the level of interest in this extraordinarily important and grave subject. May I appeal to colleagues to help me to help them? There is a premium upon brevity, which I feel sure will be brilliantly exemplified by Mr Iain Duncan Smith.

Ian Blackford: All of us in the House and, I am sure, throughout the entire United Kingdom, welcome the opportunity provided by the Prime Minister’s statement this morning. We can all reflect on the scenes that we woke up to last week: the horror, suffering and pain that those who were living in the tower block must have gone through and the agony of seeing the fire spread through that building. I thank the members of the emergency services for putting their lives on the line, in this case and other instances that we have seen over the course of the past few weeks. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to them.
We in the Scottish National party want to work with the Government on these matters. I think the incident last week is a defining moment in the evolution of our society. However, I respectfully say to the Prime Minister that, although she apologised to the Leader of the Opposition for the short notice of her statement, the third party and all parties represented in the House should receive adequate notice. In her statement, the Prime Minister said that the initial failure was compounded by the fact that the support on the ground in the initial hours was not good enough. If the public inquiry makes recommendations on changes that have to be made, I ask that the Government accept those.
If the £5 million that has been put into the initial emergency fund is not sufficient, will the Government commit to doing what they need to in order to make sure that the appropriate financial resources are available? I welcome the Prime Minister’s saying that the new housing block that has been built by Berkeley Homes will be made available to some of the families. She talked of families moving in over the summer, but can she be more specific as to when that will happen? Can we make sure that families who wish to live in the local area will have that commitment that housing will be made available? That should be done on the basis that there will be consultation, and that if the first offer is not acceptable, alternatives will be put in place.
Does the Prime Minister agree that the public inquiry should be empowered to consider all the steps that were not taken leading up and contributing to this incident? All of those with a legitimate interest must be able to participate. That has to include bereaved families and survivors as well as individuals and organisations with an interest, such as the residents’ campaign and local representative organisations. This needs to be about Parliament recognising the significance of what has happened. We should never be in this position again as a country.
I welcome the Prime Minister’s remarks about social housing. Let us make sure that we invest in social housing. I grew up in social housing and I fondly remember my childhood. I want people to have the same opportunities that we had to live in social housing of which we can all be proud.

Theresa Villiers: Will the Prime Minister encourage local authorities to follow the lead that Barnet Council showed, with an immediate re-inspection of its high-rise blocks and the announcement of a programme of investment in new safety measures to be guided by the fire service and to include sprinklers where they are needed?

Harriet Harman: I thank the Prime Minister for her statement. The news she has given the House today—that the cladding was indeed combustible, as testing showed—is chilling, and will be horrifying confirmation of what we all saw on our television screens; but it will be even more frightening for others. There are 58 tower blocks in my constituency, and there are thousands all around the country.
May I suggest that the Prime Minister get a grip on this personally, right away, and that what she does—[Interruption.] I am just going to make a suggestion, if I may. I suggest that the Prime Minister use Cobra to call together all local authorities and require them, within a certain timeframe, to check the cladding on every one of their tower blocks. If she has done so  already, I look forward to hearing that, and to hearing about the timescale. She should also give authorities the resources that will enable them to conduct their inspections within a certain timescale, and commit resources that will enable the cladding to be replaced within a certain timescale when others find that it is combustible. That is exactly what Cobra should be used for. It is not good enough just to congratulate or encourage other councils; the Prime Minister must get a grip on this personally.
The Prime Minister said that the Lakanal House coroner’s inquest findings had been acted on, but I can tell her that they have not. In 2013, the coroner said that those deaths had been avoidable, that there should have been sprinklers, that there should have been a change in the fire instructions, and that there should be greater supervision of contracts and fire inspections. The Prime Minister said that this was an “unimaginable” tragedy, and that those deaths should not have happened. They would not have happened if the Government had acted on the Lakanal House coroner’s inquest rulings.

Theresa May: First, let me clarify what I said in my statement. I said that local authorities had been invited to send in samples of cladding on similar buildings; they had done so, and some of the samples had been found to be combustible. It was in relation to that testing that I used the term “combustible”. I think it important that I clarify that. As the right hon. and learned Lady suggested, we had immediately taken the precautionary measure of asking all local authorities to go out, identify blocks with similar cladding, and take measures, together with their local fire and rescue services, to ensure that people in those buildings were safe. Part of that process has involved the testing. As I have said, we stand ready to continue to test for all local authorities that wish to send in samples.
As for the right hon. and learned Lady’s description of the coroner’s report on Lakanal House, the coroner did not, as I understand it, say that there should be sprinklers in every property of this type. What is important, and what underpinned what she said, is the necessity of ensuring that people living in similar blocks are able to feel reassured about their safety. We have taken the steps: local authorities have been working with fire and rescue services. Once the tests on the cladding have been given to local authorities, they are acting immediately to ensure the safety of people within. There are a number of steps that they can undertake, and we expect them to do what is necessary.

Cheryl Gillan: The amount of remedial work that may need to be carried out on a limited timescale will possibly mean that great pressures will fall on the workforce that are capable of carrying out that remedial work. Will the Prime Minister ensure that her colleagues in Government will make all the necessary funds and resources available if we need to recruit or train further personnel to carry out remedial work on those blocks that fail the test?

Yvette Cooper: Further to the question of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the cladding on the tower is a standard product that is available for sale. I do not understand why the Prime Minister cannot tell us whether that product is compliant with the building regulations for a tower that is this high. Why can she not tell us the answer? Will she also confirm that the Building Regulations Advisory Committee, which should be looking at part B of the building regulations on fire safety, has not yet actually met to look at how the regulations could be improved?

Liz Saville-Roberts: Sympathies are not enough but, on behalf of my party, I offer them to all who have suffered. I also express my gratitude to emergency services officers, who showed the dedication of heroes in unimaginable conditions. Criminal investigations are only to be expected, but penalising individuals is partial retribution; those in government should search their souls. Will the Prime Minister commit to ensure that future policy, legislation and resources mean a disaster of this magnitude can never happen again in a 21st century, first world country?

John Bercow: Order. As befits the occasion, these are thoughtful and solemn exchanges, but I must advise the House that progress thus far has been very slow. I am keen to try to accommodate the extent of the interest, and therefore I appeal to colleagues now to confine themselves to pithy, short, single sentence questions, of which the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is a notable exponent.

Bernard Jenkin: I commend my right hon. Friend’s statement and the extraordinary degree of personal responsibility she is taking in this response. Have she and her officials had the opportunity to look at reports by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and its predecessor Committee under Dr Tony Wright, which have repeatedly recommended that the House of Commons should have more of a role in the setting up of such inquiries? Will she consider asking the House to establish a special Select Committee very quickly, to look at the terms of reference, to have a pre-appointment hearing of the chair of the inquiry, and to set the budget and the timetable, and make sure this public inquiry has cross-party and public confidence, which so many public inquiries have failed to have?

Helen Whately: We have heard that the residents of Grenfell Tower had spoken out about their fears but not been listened to, like so many of our constituents, on whose behalf we, as MPs, frequently write to organisations asking for them to be given a fair hearing, despite the dedication of many thousands of staff. I ask my right hon. Friend to look at the management systems and culture in organisations that serve the public, to work out what needs to change to ensure that every citizen of this country, whoever and wherever they are, are not just heard but listened to.

John Bercow: I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford East (Annaliese Dodds) on her succinctness. It is clear that she has now volunteered to author the textbook for distribution to colleagues.

Rushanara Ali: Residents of Grenfell Tower warned the housing provider of the dangers and said that it would take a fire in a tower block for notice to be taken. Will the Prime Minister relook at the Localism Act, which currently requires residents to allow for eight weeks before they can make a complaint to the ombudsman for a matter to be taken up through their Members of Parliament?

John Howell: Will the results of the individual examinations to which the Prime Minister has referred be produced as they become available, or will they all be subjected to the public examination? If the former, may we have a timetable for that?

Theresa May: As regards the tests on the cladding, as soon as the results are available—and the test can be done within hours of the samples being received—the local authorities, housing associations or private landlords will be informed of them.

Theresa May: I thank my hon. Friend. We will consider that, and putting it in place here, with John Barradell as gold command, has helped to move things forward and ensure that the response has improved.

Alan Brown: In paying more attention to social housing, will the Prime Minister pledge to review the right-to-buy discount policy, the implicit message from Government that renting is not aspirational enough and how the one-for-one replacement process is managed, and allow greater building of council houses?

Amber Rudd: With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the terrorist attacks we have seen since Parliament last sat.
There has been no summer like it. When we rose seven weeks ago, we left this House in the wake of the worst terrorist attack our country had seen in over a decade, with Khalid Masood trying to strike at the heart of our democracy. He was foiled that day by one of our brave police officers. But tragically it has proved to be the first of many attempts to bring terror and hate to our streets. Two months later, a cowardly and devastating attack in Manchester left 22 people dead and 59 injured after a suicide bomber targeted children at a concert in the Manchester Arena. On 3 June, a van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on London Bridge before three men got out of the vehicle and began stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people were killed and 48 injured. And then on Monday, almost exactly one year after Jo Cox was brutally murdered in Birstall, we woke to the news of the return of far-right terror, with a man viciously driving into a group of Muslim worshippers in north London. One man who had fallen ill before the attack died, and nine others were treated in hospital. Westminster, the Manchester Arena, London Bridge, and now Finsbury Park: 36 innocent people dead and over 150 hospitalised; a tragic loss of innocent life.
Last week, I met a mother and father who had lost their daughter in the vicious attacks on London Bridge. She had been stabbed while out celebrating her new job with a friend in Borough Market. Just under two weeks before, she planned to be at the arena in Manchester where Salman Abedi committed his heinous crimes, but she decided not to use her ticket. She had come to London to enjoy a wonderful trip away—a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But instead it was the last trip she ever made. I know everyone in this House will want to join me in expressing our sorrow for the pain her family will be feeling, and all those families who have lost loved ones will be feeling, as well as passing on our thoughts and prayers for those victims who are still trying to recover from the trauma and tragedy of these events.
I also know that the House will want to join me in acknowledging the incredible efforts of our emergency services during this difficult period. The events of recent months serve to remind us of the bravery, professionalism and, above all, incredible sacrifice made by those who work to keep us safe.
As Home Secretary, there is nothing more saddening than standing before Parliament to deliver a statement like this. These acts of terrorism represent the very worst of humanity. They seek to spread fear, intolerance and hate. Countering this threat has always been a crucial part of the work of this Government. That is why we introduced measures to disrupt the travel of foreign fighters, and why we passed the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which gives the police and intelligence services more powers and the tools they need to keep the public safe. It is also why, just seven weeks ago, we legislated to strengthen our response to terrorist financing with the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
We have protected overall police funding in real terms since 2015, increased counter-terrorism budgets and funded an uplift in the number of armed police officers. We are now in the process of recruiting over 1,900 additional security and intelligence staff. The Channel programme, which offers voluntary, tailored programmes of support to people assessed as being at risk of radicalisation, has supported over 1,000 at-risk individuals since 2012. Following referrals from the counter-terrorism internet referral unit, social media providers have removed 270,000 pieces of illegal terrorist material since February 2010.
However, we are entering a new phase of global terrorism, and many of the challenges that we face are unprecedented. We now believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face. Between June 2013 and the Westminster bridge attack in March this year, the security services foiled 13 plots linked to or inspired by Islamist extremists, but just since then, we have seen five plots prevented as well as three such Islamist extremist plots succeed and of course the appalling attack at Finsbury Park earlier this week.
We must therefore do more. We must do more to defeat ideologies of hatred by turning people’s minds away from violence and towards pluralistic British values. We must make sure that these ideologies are not able to flourish in the first place. We must do more to force tech companies to take down terror-related content from their platforms. We must also do more to identify, challenge and stamp out the extremism that lurks in our communities. That is why we will set up a commission for countering extremism. For just as the Labour Government in the 1970s set us on a course to tackling racial inequality in this country by setting up the Commission for Racial Equality, we need to—and must—do more to tackle the extremists who seek to radicalise and weaponise young people in Britain today.
Doing more also means asking difficult questions about what has gone wrong. In the light of the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester, Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy will be reviewed to make sure that the police and the security services have what they need to keep us safe. In addition, there will be a review of the handling of recent terror attacks to look at whether lessons can be learned about our approach, and I  am pleased to announce that David Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, will oversee it.
What we have witnessed in Manchester and London are the depraved actions of murderers intent on tearing our country apart, but each act of hate has been met by overwhelming defiance. In Borough Market, I recently saw stallholders dishing olives out into plastic pots, shoppers searching for delicious treats and tourists flicking through guidebooks in the shadow of the Shard. Rather than being divided by recent violence, people seemed even closer together. We should follow the example of the traders and the shoppers of Borough Market. Terrorists want us to fear and to turn on one another, but we will never give terrorists what they want. We will stand together, and we will make the point that terrorists will never win, and that our values, our country and our unity will prevail. I commend this statement to the House.

Diane Abbott: The Opposition are grateful to the Home Secretary for her statement. We would like to offer our condolences to all the families of the victims of the Westminster, Manchester, and London bridge and Borough Market attacks and, most recently, the Finsbury Park attack—36 innocent people dead, 150 people hospitalised, with too many families to whom children or parents will never come home, too many people, particularly children, who have seen sights that they may never be able to unsee, and whole communities traumatised.
The Opposition commend all the emergency services, including the police, the fire service, the British Transport police and NHS staff, for their swift action, for running towards danger and for coming in off shift, which undoubtedly prevented worse injuries and saved lives.
I would like to say a word about the imam at the Finsbury Park mosque. He put himself at risk to protect and defend the alleged assailant, who had driven over so many people outside the mosque. I believe that this imam exemplifies the best of the values of Islam, such as peace and justice, as well as the best of British values.
I would also like to say a word about the community around the Finsbury Park mosque. I was there this week and I met people of all faiths—Christian leaders, Jewish leaders, including my constituents Rabbi Gluck and Rabbi Pinter, and of course Muslim leaders—working together to heal the community and take the community forward. I believe that the way in which multi-faith and inter-community co-operation is working in practice in that area of London shows us the way forward in the long run in contesting the ideology of fear, violence and terror.
The variety of the attacks and the varied backgrounds of their perpetrators reveal that we face multiple threats. No single type of person and no single community is the sole source of these attacks. We all face these attacks and we must all face them together. Of course, the blame for the attacks lies solely with the perpetrators and any murderous supporters and enablers they may have had, but it is reasonable for this House to say that the role of Government is to secure the safety of our citizens, and it is reasonable for the House to ask whether everything has been done that could reasonably have been done.
I noted the actions that the Government have taken in the Home Secretary’s statement. Largely, the Opposition support them, but we warn against an emphasis on more legislation, rather than looking at resources. We will look at all legislative proposals that the Government bring forward on their merits, but we believe that resources are at the heart of this matter, not just new legislation. In that view, we are supported by Max Hill, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. His objective view is that the current powers are sufficient. He told the BBC after the Prime Minister’s speech in which she called for more powers:
“My view coming into the scrutiny which we are told the prime minister wants to conduct is that we do have the appropriate laws in place, and that essentially the police and security services, and those whose job it is to keep us safe, do have the powers at their disposal.”
He added that there was a case for increased use of terrorism prevention and investigation measures.
On the question of resources, it is one thing to talk about specialist policing and security resources, but the Opposition do not believe we can overstate the importance of neighbourhood policing. It is that neighbourhood engagement at all levels, often in what seem to be simple ways, that builds a community’s confidence in officialdom and the Government, and that encourages people to come forward with the information that may help us stop future terrorist activity. We have said and continue to say that it is wrong that since 2010, we have lost 20,000 from police numbers. We oppose the further cuts to the police budgets that are in the pipeline.
The Home Secretary keeps saying that the Government have protected police budgets. I have to tell her that no policing stakeholders, including the Police Federation, support her in saying that police budgets and resources have not been hit. We are being told that austerity must end, so will the Home Secretary now commit to halting these cuts, or does austerity still apply to our safety?
Senior retired officers have said that police cuts have gone too far. I have heard that Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has written to the Home Secretary saying that counter-terrorism is not able to operate effectively because of demands in other areas of policing, and that if resources were diverted to counter-terrorism, other areas of policing would suffer. He is saying that cuts have consequences, and that the Home Secretary’s cuts run the risk of putting us all in danger. The Opposition’s understanding is that the Home Secretary is going to cut again.

Dominic Grieve: I greatly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I want to raise just two or three points. First, I particularly welcome the review of the sentencing guidelines. That should happen because of the evidence that individuals who commit acts preparatory to terrorism may be receiving sentences that are insufficient, although clearly they need to be proportionate.
The second issue concerns the response and how our security services work to deal with the threat. My right hon. Friend will know that the Government have invested considerably in that. The money spent and the number of officers available have been greatly enhanced. Equally, it is right that, because of the classified nature of the work, some details cannot be given to the House. That emphasises to me that one of the problems in the past three and a half months has been that we have not had an Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament to provide the sort of scrutiny that might be helpful to hon. Members in understanding what has gone on, what should happen in future and whether any improvements could be made. I therefore gently urge my right hon. Friend to make representations to the Prime Minister that that should be given priority.

Joanna Cherry: I add the voice of the Scottish National party to those who condemn the terrible attacks, and extend our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the dead and our best wishes for a full recovery to those injured.
I welcome the Home Secretary back to her place and look forward to working with her on this and other important issues.
The Finsbury Park attack reminds us that terrorism is a threat to all communities in the United Kingdom and it is therefore important that measures to counter extremism never segregate or stigmatise communities.
I have three questions for the Home Secretary. First, I am concerned that, while commendable, the Government’s plans to establish a commission risk, without legislation, by-passing parliamentary scrutiny and the need for legal certainty about the definition of terms such as “extremism” and “British values”. How will she ensure that Parliament gets to scrutinise those matters?
Secondly, we in the SNP believe that to fight terrorism effectively we can use existing legislation. and that what really matters is that the police and security services have the necessary resources to act effectively under that legislation. Will the Home Secretary confirm that such resources will be made available in future?
Thirdly, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister spoke of ripping up human rights to fight terrorism. Will the Home Secretary confirm that there is nothing in the Human Rights Act or the European convention on human rights to prevent us from taking a robust approach to terrorism? Will she therefore confirm that there are no plans to tear up human rights and that we can tackle terrorism and uphold the standards of this society without doing so?

Julian Lewis: Will there be an opportunity to give evidence to the commission for countering terrorism and extremism, based on the  lessons that we have learnt in the past to counter other totalitarian ideologies such as communism and Nazism? Does my hon. Friend accept that organisations like ISIL/Daesh and al-Qaeda rise and fall, but the underlying doctrine of what ought to be called un-Islamic extremism persists? Does she accept that that is what must be countered, and that an active Government agency to counter it is what is required?

Margaret Hodge: I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. In the days following both the Manchester and London Bridge attacks, a number of my constituents were arrested, with suspicions around terrorism. This is the first time that that has happened in Barking and Dagenham. Most of my constituents, of all religions, all creeds and all ethnicities, share with all of us the horror at the outrages, the praise for the services and the feelings of empathy for those who have been affected by the attacks. However, the Home Secretary said in her statement that those who perpetrate terrorism seek to spread fear, intolerance and hate, and I have concerns that, in the aftermath of the attacks, that is precisely what could happen in my constituency. The Muslim community in particular are feeling very vulnerable and isolated, and the police have not been able to give them the reassurance that they want. Will she take steps to ensure that police resources are made available so that there is a police presence there, the allegations of race hate crime, which are already growing, are dealt with and other measures that will provide security for all communities in my constituency, and therefore promote tolerance, are put in place rapidly and not left to fester?

Neil Coyle: Time is tight, so I shall focus on Borough Market in my constituency. The horrific attack there was met with a community spirit, business action and police and NHS responses that were truly second to none. This makes me even prouder to be re-elected to serve the area. The Home Secretary has said again today that the terrorists will never win, but that will require more action. How are the Government ensuring that tourist and leisure hotspots such as Borough Market are better protected? What budget is being made available to fit barriers and bollards to protect civilians? How will the Government ensure that the NHS is not a victim of major incidents? Southwark hospitals are struggling financially, so what additional budgets are being made available to ensure that their tremendous efforts are covered? How are the Government going to ensure that the police have not just the numbers but the resources and powers to prevent atrocities and to act when they occur? This short, brutal attack at Borough Market was over quite quickly, but the market remained closed for over a week, costing some of the small traders tens of thousands of pounds. What are the Government doing to make insurance companies pay out on their business interruption clauses, given that some are, outrageously, withholding payment?

Robert Alexander Courts: I am fortunate to know the Muslim community in west Oxfordshire well, and I wonder whether the Home Secretary can provide some further details of how the commission will work with local communities to our mutual benefit.

Amber Rudd: We have an open mind about working out the best way of approaching the commission for countering extremism. We will ensure that it covers all parts of the country, as has been suggested, and that it applies itself to rooting out and discovering information about extremism, wherever it is found. When we have more information, I will come back to him.

James Cartlidge: I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, given in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), that she believes that she is on target to recruit the number of armed officers that she is seeking. I have been speaking to the armed officers who protect us on this estate, and interestingly, however, there is one common piece of feedback: they are worried about the quality of potential recruits due to the disincentive of automatic referral to the IPCC. I wonder whether it is time to consider whether that should still apply in terrorist attacks.

Amber Rudd: I can reassure my hon. Friend that for certain attacks, such as the marauding firearms attack, which are sometimes declared as a terrorist attack, as occurred here, the IPCC immediately states that such a referral is not necessary. A particularly different approach is taken when there is a terrorist attack, but in general the IPCC does an important job in creating that clear line, which is as useful to the police as it is to the rest of us.

Alex Chalk: At present, a person who pleads guilty to possessing a well-known extremist publication, which includes instructions for making home-made bombs, will typically be sentenced to just 14 months. So they will be out in seven months, and will still be radicalised and be a danger. Does the Home Secretary agree that the time has come to toughen up sentences under sections 57 and 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000?

Mike Gapes: Further to the question of my friend and constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), houses next to constituents of mine were raided by the police over recent days, and there are links between the people who carried out the vile murders at London Bridge and Borough Market and several parts of east London. We know that radical so-called preachers such as Anjem Choudary were recruiting within our community for years before they were eventually jailed. What are the Government going to do to deal with, as the Home Secretary said, the ideological issues?

Amber Rudd: That is the nub of what we are trying to address. The fact is that people are becoming weaponised by the crazed ideology of Daesh, often over the internet while they are at home, by all the hate material. The message from Daesh is not to join them any more in the so-called caliphate, but instead to become weapons in their communities. We are making sure we work with the internet companies to take that information down, and that we have a programme that reaches out and tries to protect people in those communities so that they do not become radicalised. We are also looking at what else we can do. That is why we are taking part in a review, looking at both the past and the future. We want to make sure that we stop that radicalisation taking hold in people’s communities.

Stephen Doughty: May I praise the united response of Cardiff communities, particularly faith communities, to the recent attacks, both in condemnation and in solidarity with London and Manchester, especially given the shocking news that the alleged attacker in Finsbury Park was living in Cardiff?
The Home Secretary mentioned a forum to tackle the internet issue. The fact is that there is still far-right and Islamist content on the internet today on platforms like YouTube and Twitter. When is she going to get serious about serious sanctions for companies that are failing to deliver on their responsibilities to remove this content?

Amber Rudd: TPIMs form an important part of the tools we have available to deal with returning foreign fighters. We do track foreign fighters very carefully, where we can, and we recognise that they are potentially the most dangerous cohort of people returning here. TPIMs are one of the tools and they can be used when necessary. I am involved in all the decision making around them. It currently seems correct that those tools are available and can be used when they are needed. If it becomes necessary to use them more, we may need additional legislation, in which case I will come back to the House and ask the hon. Lady to make that case with me to the shadow Home Secretary.

Amber Rudd: I thank the hon. Lady for those comments; she is absolutely right. On her specific request for more support, we already have a £2.4 million fund for places of worship, to which a number of mosques have applied to make sure that they are safe. I can announce that next week I will open up an additional £1 million for places of worship. That addresses the concern from some people, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, that in order for a place of worship to apply for the funds there had to have already have been a hate crime in the area. We are now making sure that additional funds are available so that people who are concerned about their mosques can apply for money to support their endeavours to keep those mosques safe.

Kate Green: Community and faith leaders in my community have been outspoken in their revulsion and condemnation of the attacks in Manchester and London, but there is also consternation at reports that members of the Didsbury mosque, which Salman Abedi and his family attended, had reported his radicalisation, but it appears that that was not heeded or acted upon. What can the Home Secretary say about that, and what assurances can she give the community that such reports will be acted upon, and that lack of resources will not present a barrier?

Valerie Vaz: May I start by welcoming the Leader of the House to her new post and to her first business statement? I also wish to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington). He was an excellent Leader of the House and will make a fine Lord Chancellor, protecting the independence of the judiciary as we uphold the rule of law.
One of the conventions in this place is that when a statutory instrument is prayed against, the Government will provide time for a debate. Because of the general election, the personal independence payment regulations, the tuition fee regulations and the rape clause were not debated, although they were scheduled for debate on 19 April. Will the Leader of the House find time for debates on those regulations?
This wonderful resilient country of ours is grieving—from Manchester to London Bridge, Westminster to Finsbury Park, and Kensington to Batley and Spen. The pain of loss may lessen, but it never goes away and lives are changed forever. As we hear about those lives, we mourn the loss of talent for this country.
Earlier today, the Prime Minister made a statement on Grenfell Tower. I am not sure why it took a week for her to confirm that all the people who were affected could finally be housed nearby and that any payments made to them will not affect any other entitlement.
May I ask the Leader of the House to confirm—perhaps she could do it in a letter and place it in the Library—that the number of counsellors for firefighters was reduced from 14 to two under the previous Mayor of London—now the Foreign Secretary? Kensington council has the reserves but not the staff to deal with the disaster. Other local authorities are helping. Ealing council, for example, is running the rest centre in Westway. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that the disaster was the fault of the state at local and national level, but it is the elected members  of the council and the Government who are responsible and accountable. The state, through its public servants, has responded brilliantly. It is blameless.
There seems to have been some confusion about the review of building regulations. The review, which was recommended by the coroner in 2013, was announced by the former Member for Croydon Central—now the Prime Minister’s chief of staff—in October 2016, but when asked when it would take place, we were told that it would be in due course. Will the Leader of the House make time for a statement on that before the inquiry?
The Government want to consult again on social care, but the independent Dilnot commission reported in 2011. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether the Dilnot report will be part of the consultation, or will it now be abandoned? Will it be yet another report that is not actioned? Dilnot costed his proposals at £1.7 billion. Simple maths tells us that the £3 billion top-down reorganisation could have saved the Government money.
It is unclear how Parliament will be kept informed during EU negotiations. Yes, we do want a running commentary so will the Leader of the House ensure that there is a timetable for a debate on the report-back on where we are with the negotiations? That is particularly important as the Chancellor appears to be providing a running commentary of his own, setting out his own different policy.
The Queen’s Speech mentions a new industrial policy. My hon. Friends the Members for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) want a statement or a debate on the Government’s position on the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, which is part of the old industrial policy. Without a decision from the Government soon, the project may collapse, putting at risk 2,000 local jobs. Will the Leader of the House please say whether we can have that debate?
I want to welcome new Members and say goodbye and thank you to former ones. Some Members used to turn up regularly to business questions and they are no longer here. I want to make a special mention of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). The people put their trust in her and she has repaid it, showing them what a great MP she is.
This time last year, we all came together to remember another brilliant colleague. We will have a permanent reminder in this Chamber of her campaigning zeal, her energy and her love for humanity. Helen Joanne Leadbetter Cox will be a permanent reminder to us that we will not be divided by hate as we work in this place for the common good and in the public interest of our United Kingdom.

Andrea Leadsom: My hon. Friend raises another issue that is pertinent to all our constituencies, that of action being taken on roads without due notice. If he wants to write to me, I will be happy to pass that on to the Secretary of State for Transport so that appropriate action can be taken.

George Howarth: As Members will know, the next debate is heavily subscribed, so I implore people to make a single point. If you find yourself about to use the word “and”, resist the temptation.

Meg Hillier: Last year the Department of Health laid its accounts before the House on 21 July, the last day the House sat before the summer recess. Will the newly appointed Leader of the House—the champion of this place in Cabinet—ensure that this does not happen again? Could the accounts of not only the Department of Health, but all Government Departments be laid so that we can scrutinise them?

Andrea Leadsom: The plight of rail travellers on certain lines has been so bad for some time now. The report highlights that a great deal needs to be done to put that right. I will happily write to the Secretary of State for Transport to urge him to review that report fully and, if possible, will hold some parliamentary time in which colleagues can debate it.

Alan Brown: I have a constituent who was mugged in Ibiza, losing her passport and her money in the process, which, as hon. Members can imagine, was really upsetting. She wanted emergency documentation so that she could fly home with her friends and return to her family, but unfortunately the consulate was shut for three days for the Whitsun holiday, a time when demand is obviously higher. That is unacceptable for someone in an emergency situation. Will the Leader of the House commit herself to having a statement reviewing how such emergency situations are dealt with by consulates abroad and look to put in place an improvement plan?

Andrea Leadsom: May I first welcome the hon. Lady to her place? She is exactly right that affordable homes are vital to a thriving economy and a society that is fair to all. We have delivered more than 313,000 affordable homes since April 2010. Our target is to deliver 400,000 new affordable home starts by 2020. As I mentioned to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) earlier, the debate on the Queen’s Speech this afternoon includes housing, so the hon. Lady might well wish to make some interventions during that.

Andrea Leadsom: First, may I say that I will also miss the former Member for North East Derbyshire? She was very good in the House, like many Members who lost their seats. Although we are delighted to see new colleagues, we will miss those who are no longer here.
There will, of course, be a need for broad consultation on our whole legislative programme. As I said at the start, we do not have a majority in this House, so there is a real need to take colleagues with us. There will be a lot of consultation with many opportunities for colleagues to give their views and thoughts.

David Linden: As a new Member of this House, I was struck yesterday by the excessive pomp and ceremony of the Queen’s Speech. I just wish that the British state would put half as much effort into making sure that children in Glasgow East did not go to bed hungry last night. May we therefore have a debate in Government time on child poverty?

Stephen Doughty: I second the request made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who it is great to welcome to this House, about the shameful decision of Tesco, which affects nearly 100 of my own constituents. I also pay tribute to USDAW, which is working to support those workers.
May I ask the Leader of the House for a debate in Government time on historical injustices, particularly the historical injustice faced by those who were affected by the contaminated blood scandal, the nearly 4,500 women in my constituency affected by the state pension age changes, and the hundreds of people still suffering injustice from the Allied Steel and Wire pension scheme? These historical injustices need to be righted, and we should be debating them urgently in this House.

Alison Thewliss: High Court judge Mr Justice Collins ruled this morning that the Tory Government’s benefit cap was “unlawful” and “discriminatory”, also stating:
“Real misery is being caused to no good purpose.”
Will the Government now act immediately, not duck the matter as they did with the statutory instrument on the rape clause, and stop wasting public money on appeals on this? Will they make an urgent statement scrapping the rape clause and the two-child policy?

Andrea Leadsom: The hon. Lady is right to raise this very significant and serious public health issue. As Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until recently, I was very closely involved in the enormous amount of work that has gone into producing the air quality consultation. She is right that the plans will be published at the end of July. The Government are firmly committed to improving the UK’s air quality. That is why we have committed more than £2 billion since 2011 to increase the uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles and committed to support greener transport schemes with a further £200 million in the 2016 autumn statement. There is a lot that needs to be done, and it is a complex scenario, as she, too, knows very well, but I do believe that we will be able to make strong progress very soon.

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Chris Grayling, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Amber Rudd, Mr Secretary Lidington, Secretary Greg Clark and Secretary David Mundell presented a Bill to amend sections 71, 71A and 84 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 1) with explanatory notes (Bill 1-EN).

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Greg Clark, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Secretary Lidington, Dr Secretary Fox and Secretary David Davis presented a Bill to make provision approving for the purposes of section 8 of the European Union Act 2011 draft decisions under Article 352 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union on the participation of the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Serbia in the work of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and on the signing and conclusion of an agreement between the European Union and Canada regarding the application of their competition laws.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 2) with explanatory notes (Bill 2-EN).

Sajid Javid: Before I open today’s debate, I want to reflect briefly on the horror that unfolded at Grenfell Tower last week. My thoughts are still very much with the victims, their families and their friends. All hon. Members will have heard the Prime Minister’s statement earlier today and, having visited the site for myself and met some of the bereaved families, I want to echo her determination to get to the bottom of whatever went wrong. I will also write to hon. Members shortly with a detailed update on what we are doing to support the people who have been affected by this tragedy, the progress we are making in rehousing people and the steps we are taking to improve fire safety at similar tower blocks across the country.
In the longer term—this point is perhaps more pertinent to this debate—it is clear that any changes in the wake of this tragedy should not just be technical or legislative ones. What happened at Grenfell also showed us all that we need a change in attitude. We all need to rethink our approach to social housing, and we need to reflect on the way in which successive Governments have engaged with and responded to social tenants. We do not yet know for sure whether this disaster could have been avoided if the people who called Grenfell Tower their home had been listened to, but we do know that for far too long their voices fell on deaf ears. If nothing else, let the legacy of Grenfell be that such voices will never, ever be ignored again.
It is good to see the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) in his place, to which I am delighted to welcome him back after the general election. I am even more delighted that we have not swapped places. I know that we have a great deal in common—perhaps we use the same barber—and it is always a pleasure to debate with him. I look forward to doing so regularly during the next five years. Like other hon. Members, I have heard the right hon. Gentleman talk about his party’s policies on the big issues facing the country, especially the housing issue of how we can build more homes, and we will no doubt hear him set out some of those policies.

Stephen Doughty: We of course have a Labour Government in Wales who are committed to building 20,000 new homes, and who are building new social housing and council housing in Cardiff as I speak. Does the Secretary of State agree that lessons also need to be learned from Wales about its different approach to fire safety, including the fact that we introduced measures requiring sprinkler systems to be fitted in new high-rise buildings and converted buildings? There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Welsh Labour. Will he listen to them?

Sajid Javid: I agree very much with my hon. Friend. It is very important to continue the work on leasehold reform, and we will certainly take it forward. Let me take this opportunity to thank him for all the work he has done and the contribution he has made to the debate on that reform.
During the general election, we heard from the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne and his colleagues about Labour’s housing policy, and no doubt we will hear more shortly. Let us be clear, however, that it was not just an attempt to wind back the ideological clock to the 1970s; it would have undone so much of the progress that we have made during the past seven years.

Sajid Javid: If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, he will very clearly hear what the Government’s track record is on social housing.
This is the progress that the Government have made since we first took office in 2010: we have a resilient, growing economy; the labour market is in the strongest position it has been in for years; and the claimant count is at its lowest level for 45 years, with millions more people in work compared with 2010. That is thanks in part to our wide-ranging process of welfare reform: 520,000 people are receiving universal credit, which is helping to transform lives and to make sure that people are always better off in work than on benefits. In the past year, the number of disabled people in work has increased by more than 170,000. The Department for Work and Pensions has launched tailored support for people with a disability or ill health through our personal support package. We are of course remain committed to a strong, humane welfare safety net. Every year, we spend some £90 billion supporting families, people with disabilities, jobseekers and people on low incomes. By 2020, we will have given local authorities £1 billion in discretionary housing payments for residents who need extra help.

Sajid Javid: I agree very much with my hon. Friend about the importance of self-build and factory-built housing, and making sure there are enough plots for that. That is why a key part of the housing White Paper was about working on how we can diversify the market further. I thank him for the work he has done and continues to do in this sector. He has made a significant contribution.
We are investing more than £7 billion through the affordable homes programme, which will provide funding to housing associations, local authorities and other providers to deliver 225,000 affordable housing starts by March 2021. We are making the affordable homes programme more flexible so that it funds a range of affordable homes for rent, as well as home ownership. That will enable providers to build a range of homes to suit people’s needs.
My most urgent priority continues to be getting rough sleepers off our streets. We will establish a homelessness reduction taskforce, pilot Housing First and implement the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 so that more people are helped earlier.
In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it is more important than ever that we continue to support housing associations and local authorities with their plans to regenerate housing estates. We have paid out some £32 million in grants to support early phase work with local residents. We are providing practical support and guidance to ensure that tenants are at the heart of all new regeneration schemes, and that their rights are protected. We shall continue to assess bids to allocate £290 million of project finance.
But that is not all: we are determined to make all types of housing more affordable and secure for ordinary working people. That is why we will legislate to stop tenants being charged fees for renting a property. That will mean that tenants will be able to see at a glance exactly what an advertised property will cost them, with no hidden or upfront charges. It will also stop unscrupulous agents who rip off tenants with unjustifiable and opaque fees. The full details will be in a draft tenants’ fees Bill, which we expect to publish during the first Session of this Parliament.
Can we deliver all this? Yes we can. Just look at our track record. Since 2010, we have delivered 893,000 additional homes, including 333,000 affordable homes.

Amanda Milling: Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the news that thousands of new homes are being built in Cannock Chase, with new homes being built every week? Does he agree that sites such as the Rugeley B power station are ideal places for new homes?

Karen Buck: I am looking at the live tables—published online yesterday, I believe—concerning the record of the Government that he represents. It shows that the number of social rent starts was 39,492 at the end of 2009-10 and had fallen to 944 by 2016-17. Can he explain that?

Sajid Javid: Over the past six years, 330,000 new affordable homes have been built, which is a record in a six-year period and is certainly higher than the last six years of the last Labour Government. For every 170 right to buy sales, Labour built just one new council house—a replacement rate of less than 0.6%.
In 2010, when house building completions hit their lowest peacetime level since the great depression, who was the Minister in charge of housing? I will let hon. Members know: it was the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) himself. You will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for being a little bit sceptical when the right hon. Gentleman stands up and claims to have all the answers.
What is the great answer to housing shortfalls and rising unaffordability? What is Labour’s magic bullet to fix the broken housing market? It is a Ministry of Housing. Young people struggling to get on the housing ladder or people who cannot find a place big enough for their growing family should not worry if nothing in their area is affordable because Labour is going to create a new Government Department. It is the typical Labour prescription: there is no problem that cannot be fixed with a bit more bureaucracy.
That is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives in a nutshell. We want to build more homes for hard-working people; they want to build more offices for civil servants. Moving the furniture around Whitehall may create the illusion of action, but it does not get any homes built. Only this Government can deliver the housing and market reforms that this country needs. Only this Government can provide the economic strength we need for house builders to thrive in a post-Brexit world. Only this Queen’s Speech takes the first steps towards fixing our broken housing market. That is why I am delighted to commend it to the House.

John Healey: I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker; I think this is the first time that you have been in the Chair in the Chamber. May I also welcome almost all of my Labour colleagues back to the House after the election, and all 87 new Members from all  parties? As elected Members of the House, ours is a special job with special responsibilities. Last but not least, may I welcome the Secretary of State and his old team back to the Front Bench? There is a new Housing Minister, but, sadly, he comes with no new ideas or plans to deal with the housing crisis in this country.
These are extraordinary times. There is a Government Bench without a Government, a Prime Minister who cannot even seal a deal with the DWP—I mean the DUP. [Interruption.] She might have better luck with the DWP; she cannot seal a deal with the Democratic Unionist party. There is also a Queen’s Speech with no guarantee of getting the number of votes needed to approve it. This is the first minority Government in this country for 38 years, but this Prime Minister is no Jim Callaghan. She called the election expecting a bigger majority and saying she wanted a stronger mandate. She now has no mandate, no majority and no authority.
Normally, the Queen’s Speech sets out what the Government will do; this Queen’s Speech sets out what they won’t do, can’t do and daren’t do. They will not make the economic changes to invest for the future and protect our public services. They cannot put forward a full programme for Government, because the Prime Minister cannot yet do a deal with the DUP. They dare not even implement their own manifesto, and have taken it down from their website.

John Healey: We would be happy to consult on that. My main argument is with Ministers. They are making the wrong judgments and they are not putting in place the help that young people need in particular. That is why—the hon. Gentleman may know this—the number of homeowners under 45 has fallen by 900,000 since 2010. Young people’s hopes and dreams of ever owning their own home are being completely dashed, and the Government have no plan in this Queen’s Speech or in their manifesto to fix that.
In truth, the Prime Minister is locked in place by her party only until its members judge that they can dump her without facing the British people again in a fresh election. It was Margaret Thatcher who said:
“Minority Governments can only struggle on from day to day with a series of short-term measures. They can’t and don’t tackle the longer-term questions that affect the future of our nation and the wellbeing of all of us.”
The question for the Queen’s Speech is whether the “short-term” will be days, weeks or months. On 8 June, the Prime Minister asked the people for their judgment on seven years of Conservative Government, and they gave it. Real wages have fallen, Government debt has risen, investment in new transport and housing has been slashed, the NHS is in crisis, schools are cutting teachers and last year, more than a million people used a food bank. At the same time, there have been big income tax cuts for the top earners, with more tax cuts to come for the richest on wealth that they do not even earn. We have had seven years of failure and a party with no answers to people’s problems, no hope for the future, no plan to change the country for the better or make government work in the interests of all.

Huw Merriman: The right hon. Gentleman talks about our having no plan, but only a few days ago, I was at the new Bexhill business park, which has been funded by Government money. There is a new road, which will open up new land not just for housing but for employment sites. Does that not sound like a plan?

John Healey: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman’s constituency of Bexhill has seen the benefit of some Government investment and support in recent years. The part of the Barnsley borough in my constituency certainly has not. The Government seem simply to overlook large parts of the country.
I now turn to housing, the theme of today’s debate, and to Grenfell Tower. The Prime Minister was right today to apologise, to admit that local government and national Government were too slow and to take charge herself. However, in a set of important commitments, which we welcome, she set several hares running and failed to answer a number of important questions.  Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made the point that the safety checks that are imperative for all 4,000 tower blocks around the country are about not just cladding but all aspects of fire prevention and fire safety. The Secretary of State needs to make it clear that the checks will be comprehensive and rapid and that if local authorities need support and resources to carry them out, the Government will make that available. He also needs to make it clear—the Prime Minister did not—that if remedial work is needed to make the blocks safe and funding is required for that, the Government will provide it to ensure that the buildings are safe for their residents.

Sajid Javid: We have made clear exactly that: if a local authority needs support, including funding support, we will work with it to provide that.

John Healey: I am grateful for that and I think that the House is, too. It has taken a dozen questions to the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House to get that statement, but it is of course welcome.
I paid tribute to the Prime Minister for her leadership, having acknowledged that the Government were slow to get a grip of the matter and appreciate the scale of the tragedy. I also pay tribute to the Mayor of London, who has given a strong voice to the concerns of local communities and residents and strong leadership to the emergency services that struggled to deal with the tragedy. I pay tribute, too, to my new hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). She has been simply magnificent in her first week in the job as a Member of Parliament. I thank my less new hon. Friends the Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Hammersmith, both of whom know the area well and, as neighbouring MPs, spent much of the past week with my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington.
I was with our Labour leader in Kensington the day after the fire. Firefighters with more than 30 years’ experience told us that they had never seen anything like it. The police commander was right when she said to me, “You have to be here to appreciate how truly apocalyptic this fire was.” It was not a natural disaster, but man made. It should never have happened and must never happen again. Hon. Members of all parties have a deep responsibility to ensure that it does not.
Some have said, “Don’t try to score political points from the tragedy”, but it is about politics: ideology and policy, which the House exists to debate and decide. The  residents and communities affected by the terrible tragedy want us to tackle precisely the political and policy decisions that those in power took. The Prime Minister has talked about the lessons to learn and promised that all necessary action will be taken after the investigation. As the official Opposition, we will not rest until those who need help and a new home have it, until anyone culpable has been held fully to account and until every measure is in place to prevent it from happening ever again.
Surely what has happened must shock the country and us into changing the policy, ideology and responsibility of government. When a country as decent and well off as ours fails to provide something as basic as a safe and decent home to all our citizens, things must change. When this happens in one of the richest parts of the country, it offends our sense of living together as one nation, with each and every person equally treated and valued by our society and our Government. Things must change.
For decades after the second world war, there was a cross-party consensus about the value of social housing. There was also a recognition that, in only one year since then did we build more than 200,000 new homes without councils doing at least a third. In 2015 we saw the first year since the second world war when central Government provided no new funding to build new social rented homes. Labour’s decent homes programme to overhaul and upgrade social housing has been stopped. Last year, Ministers ended secure long-term tenancies for new council tenants.
The Secretary of State talked about the Government’s track record on social housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North exposed it. Perhaps the Secretary of State could ask his officials for Table 1012. My hon. Friend gave the figures for the number of starts; I will give the figure for social homes completed that people can live in. It was 37,000 when Labour left office. Last year, it was just over 1,000. That is the Government’s track record on social housing. It must change.

John Healey: Good. It is a small number, and it has a zero in it—and nothing else.
Let me return to the serious points that I wish to make. Secondly, let me say to the Secretary of State that all markets, organisations and consumers need regulation to guarantee safety, ensure fair practices, safeguard standards and stop abuse; yet that is not the mindset of current Conservative Ministers. Never again can a Minister who is challenged on fire safety measures say, “It is not  the Government’s responsibility”, and justify it by citing the Government’s “one in, two out” rule on regulations. That must change.

Kevin Hollinrake: The right hon. Gentleman must accept that it is this Government who introduced improved regulations insisting on the installation of smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors in homes in the private rented sector, and, for the first time, requiring electrical safety checks and checks on appliances from this autumn.

Bernard Jenkin: May I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that the last thing people want to see now is parties turning this into a party-political argument? It would be equally easy for us to point out that the present Government inherited the 2006 regulations from his Government. If there has been a failure of regulation, I think that it is shared. I think that what the public want to see is the House taking a full and shared collective responsibility for what has happened and putting it right, rather than Members trying to accuse each other in order to score political points.

Cheryl Gillan: I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker—on a temporary basis—and thank you for presiding over yet another day of debate on the Gracious Speech.
Let me, at the outset, associate myself with the remarks of both Front Benchers about the recent tragedies that have affected all of us, throughout the country, and will continue to do so. Let us hope that, after all the bad things that have happened, good things will come. I think we can all share that view.
I also think it apposite, on a day on which we are continuing our debate on the Gracious Speech, to welcome the fact that the Duke of Edinburgh—who, sadly, could not attend the State Opening of Parliament—has, I believe, left hospital today. I am sure that we all wish him a speedy recovery. I know that he would not have wanted to miss standing at the side of Her Majesty the Queen yesterday, but he was ably represented by his son.
I welcome not just the reflective way in which the Prime Minister announced the legislative programme, but, in particular, the way in which she has approached the recent tragedies. The parliamentary arithmetic that we have been given in the House will require restraint and, I believe, a great deal of thoughtfulness on the part of all politicians in all parts of the House as we steer our country out of the European Union, and increase our engagement across the wider world. It is against the sombre background of those national tragedies, which we have been discussing at such length in the Chamber since we reconvened, that we face a very daunting period as we negotiate Brexit.
The voters made the decisions for us in the House. I think we must all agree that, in the referendum and the general election, we have learnt a lesson in democracy. You cannot second-guess the electorate. None of us expected the outcome of the referendum or the general election. In welcoming the Gracious Speech, I think we all acknowledge that it is set against an extraordinary backdrop that no one truly expected.
It is natural that the legislative timetable is dominated by Brexit but it is crucial that, during Brexit, we do not lose the economic momentum that is delivering for the whole country, and in particular for my county of Buckinghamshire. Let us not forget that, over the lifetime of the last Government and the Government before, we cut the deficit by more than two thirds. We have the highest employment on record and, in 2016, we had the fastest-growing economy in the G7.
My local economy in Buckinghamshire has benefited greatly from the Conservatives being in government since 2010. Since May 2010, unemployment in Chesham and Amersham has more than halved: it has gone from 1.9% to 0.9% in May this year. Youth unemployment is down from 3.4% to 1.4% and almost 1,000 new businesses have started since 2010.
The health of the business environment is crucial to our nation’s success. Locally, we need to ensure that it is driven hard to provide not only the income that we require as a country, but the security that our citizens require. May I issue a word of warning, however, on the drive to create more housing? Particularly in Chesham and Amersham, we are finding that valuable business premises are being converted into residential properties. I do not know about the constituencies of the rest of my colleagues, but in Buckinghamshire there is a demand to start businesses, and people who want to start businesses in Buckinghamshire tell me that they cannot find the premises in which to start them. If we are losing business premises to housing, that is not the right way to create the balance in our society.
There are several Bills in the Queen’s Speech to build a stronger economy. I particularly welcome the automated and electric vehicles Bill, which I think grabs all our imaginations. I am also particularly pleased to see the space industry Bill. This country has a £13.7 billion space industry. I have to declare an interest. My husband is a long-retired senior civil servant, but he was the director general of the British National Space Centre. Thirty-three years ago, when we got married, we cancelled our honeymoon because the then lady Prime Minister was due to decide on the space plan. She failed to do so. Perhaps it will take this lady Prime Minister to decide the way forward for the space industry, which has been undervalued but is one of this country’s leading sectors. We have great expertise that can benefit us here and in the rest of the world.
I also welcome the smart meter Bill, although it raises a bit of a problem for me. I tried to have a smart meter put into my house but was told that the signal where the smart meter was supposed to go was so weak that it was impossible to install it.
Communications is vital to industry. The impediment to business in Bucks is not just the lack of premises but the lack of superfast broadband. I do not think we can expect our businesses to flourish in a post-Brexit world unless we have that vital infrastructure to support them. Sadly, we seem to prefer to put money into what I consider to be rapidly ageing technology. There is no prize—my hon. Friends are all smiling on the Conservative Benches; I think there are a few smiles on the Opposition Benches, too—for guessing my next point. It is inevitable—I cannot rise to my feet in the Chamber without mentioning it. I welcome everything in the Queen’s Speech, except the announcement of the HS2, phase 2a Bill.
HS2 will be written on my heart and my tombstone when I leave this world. I have to say that my heart fails me when I see that the Government are about to introduce what could be another hybrid Bill—a form of legislative torture for the House and the people who have to sit on the Committee that considers it—before we know that phase 1 is in the bag, so to speak.
We have heard today that there are three contenders to provide the rolling stock. Much is made of the fact that one of the bidders is Chinese, but HS2, phase 1, which is starting its construction phase, is in an appalling mess. It has haemorrhaged its senior management. Beth West is the latest person to leave the senior management of the company. Its governance and procurement policy has failed. It has failed to take into account conflicts of interest; the company CH2M pulled out of a £170 million contract. It has failed remarkably badly in its community engagement, particularly in Buckinghamshire.
I ask the Government to carry out, before any new legislation is brought forward, a complete and full review of phase 1 to date. I want them to revisit the business case, examine the governance of the project and decide whether it is good value for money for the taxpayer. That is the correct thing to do.
Of course, I would like the project to be cancelled. I make no secret of that. However, I think it is unrealistic, after so much money has been spent on it, to expect the Government to do that, but they do need to take a firm grip of the project. I would hope that, if the review showed that it was not good value for money for the taxpayer and that the technology was rapidly going to be overtaken, the Government would have the courage to bring it to an end.
I have still not given up hope that the Government, whatever their complexion, will honour their environmental principles. Although I have been grateful for the extra tunnelling that I have obtained under the Chilterns for the area of outstanding natural beauty, it still does not completely protect the whole AONB. The whole purpose of a national designation for an area of the country is to protect it from being violated by major infrastructure projects such as HS2. The Government have done only half the job. They could do extra tunnelling to the end of the AONB, which would greatly relieve Wendover, which is going to have vast noise barriers inserted in a rural environment. It would also show that the Government were putting their environmental credentials firmly at the centre of their legislative programme.
I am truly delighted that in the Queen’s Speech we have had confirmation that the mental health legislation and how it is delivering for people will be reviewed. I know that the Minister is aware that mental health provision is a huge issue for people on the autism spectrum. Research suggests that more than 70% of children on the autism spectrum develop mental health problems during their childhood. It is important that they and autistic adults are able to get good mental health support when they need it. I hope that, in responding, the Minister will be able to fill us in some more on the scope of the review. Will it just be about access to services, which Members on both sides of the House will agree is important, or will it be a root and branch review of the entire Act and how it is delivering for people? In any case, having been privileged to serve as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism in the previous Parliament, I look forward to working with the Government on where we can strengthen rights and entitlements for people with autism.
Social care has been much talked about, including the provisions that were in our manifesto but perhaps are absent from the Queen’s Speech. Improving our social care system is also a huge issue for people on the autism spectrum. I was glad to hear that the Green Paper with further proposals will be out soon.
I would like the Minister to confirm that the Green Paper will look at the whole system of adult social care, and to ensure that if any reform is brought forward, it addresses the needs of both the elderly and the working-age disabled populations. Much attention is rightly focused on the needs of our growing elderly population, but it is important that the needs of working-age disabled people, such as those with autism spectrum disorders, should also be looked at. The system is currently not working for them either.
In his opening remarks, the Minister alluded to the 170,000 disabled people who are in work. The Government have rightly made a pledge to halve the disability employment gap by getting 1 million more disabled people into work, and much good work was done in the previous Parliament through the “Work, health and disability: improving lives” Green Paper. However, as the House has heard me say before, the autism employment gap is even wider, and that work was not mentioned in the Gracious Speech. I hope that when the Minister winds up, he will be able to assure disabled people and those on the spectrum that the work to reduce the gap is still going forward and is still a priority for the Government.
I do not think anyone would disagree that the focus on mental health is welcomed on both sides of the House. However, speaking as a constituency MP, I can say that accessing effective help for people in crisis is still challenging, not least because of the multiplicity of agencies involved in the care of an individual. I hope that we can evaluate this and, in the case of the review, let us have a look at how we can simplify accessing help for problems for all concerned.
Finally, I would like to touch on education. Quite rightly, our programme is focusing on technical education, and we want to see educational standards improve across the board. However, I have to say that the funding of schools remains a major issue, particularly in my constituency. Buckinghamshire has seven out of the 10 lowest funded schools in the country, and I believe that it is necessary to ensure fairer funding to help with equality in education. I therefore urge my colleagues on the Front Bench to re-examine the funding of schools very carefully, and to ensure that sufficient funding comes to schools such as those in Buckinghamshire that have been grossly underfunded for many years.
This Queen’s Speech introduces a two-year programme. It contains 27 Bills and draft Bills, and it forms a great basis for this Government to move forward. It will provide the basis for a period of consolidation and enable us to grasp the opportunities for the whole of the country as we leave the European Union. We now have to establish the UK as a close friend of Europe, but a friend that, when it leaves the European Union, will once more be in charge of its own destiny. I commend the Queen’s Speech to the House.

Angela Crawley: I should like to associate myself with the comments made by right hon. and hon. Members across the House about the tragic incident at Grenfell Tower. We on these Benches welcome the inquiry and believe that lessons must be learned from this event.
This Queen’s Speech seems to me to be one of the most shambolic and lame legislative programmes in my lifetime. The Tories, cowed by their unnecessary election defeat, are working on a weak mandate with no authority. Since the start of the month, we have seen promises ditched as they face defeat across the House. Pledges on introducing an energy price cap, disastrous social care plans, a free vote on foxhunting, the introduction of grammar schools and the setting of an immigration target have all been dropped—and yesterday we witnessed no mention of the deliberately harmful plan to scrap the triple lock on pensions.
Yet again, this Queen’s Speech proves one thing: the Tories will continue their obsession with austerity in spite of a sea of evidence against it. Let me be clear: another Parliament of cuts is a choice, not a necessity, and it is a choice that has been decisively rejected by voters across the country. The Resolution Foundation has warned that the continuation of austerity will drive the biggest inequality since the times of Margaret Thatcher. Much of the legislation on housing has been devolved to the Scottish Government. We ended the right to buy some time ago, taking the view that unless housing is replaced, many people are left disadvantaged and lacking the opportunity to obtain affordable housing. That is something that this Government have failed to learn.
Today’s debate also focuses on social security. The High Court ruling on the benefit cap highlights the fact that it causes real damage to single families. When will this Government learn their lesson? The incomes of the poorest third of working-age households will fall by 10% over the next four years, driving a further 1 million families across this country into poverty. By 2021, there could be more than 5 million children across the UK—a number equivalent to the total population of Scotland—living in poverty. This is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and that is a disgrace.
We on these Benches choose to take a different approach. Unlike those on the Government Benches, and many on Opposition Benches, the Scottish National party has consistently and unapologetically opposed austerity. Our approach to the public finances would balance the UK budget for day-to-day spending by the end of the Parliament. It would set debt on a downward path and, crucially, free up an additional £118 billion of public investment. With our plans, we could stop the further £9 billion of additional social security cuts that this Government will inflict. That would mean that those on low incomes who rely on in-work social security, and the vulnerable and disabled, would not have to face further punishment. Despite the rhetoric from the Labour party, its plans fail to provide the same protections.
In my constituency, the cost of welfare reform is clear. Despite my constituency’s assets, almost 25% of the children in Lanark and Hamilton East grow up in poverty. Under this Government, my constituents have had to endure a reduction in employment support allowance, a freeze on in-work support, cuts to their personal independence payments and the removal of their mobility cars. Worst of all, they are now subject to a family cap and a despicable rape clause. Austerity has failed my constituents in Lanark and Hamilton East and it has failed constituents up and down the country. However, we are, for now, in a better position than some.
My constituency has yet to face the massive ramifications of the roll-out of universal credit. Later this year, the UK Government intend to introduce universal credit in South Lanarkshire. Only a few weeks ago, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations highlighted the policy as a key concern in tackling homelessness across the country. The Scottish Government have plans to mitigate some of the worst elements of the UK Government’s welfare reforms, including the roll-out of universal credit, but that will not help families across the rest of the UK. It is completely unreasonable to suggest that we should spend nearly £400 million mitigating poor decisions made by this UK Government. Universal credit will make some of my constituents homeless, and despite the work of the local authority and the third sector, the UK Government are intransigent and unrelenting in their approach.
It is clear that austerity has failed the economy and failed society. It has driven the people that we should protect into poverty, hunger, humiliation and crippling debt. I had perhaps naively hoped that their defeat earlier this month would make the UK Government reflect on their approach to social security, listen to the experts, and inject the investment necessary to genuinely rebalance the economy and create a fairer society. At its very heart, that is what a social security system ought to do, yet that is exactly what this UK Government have failed to do.

Angela Crawley: I need to make some progress.
The UK Government are fixated on a failed Brexit strategy and intent on damaging the economy and threatening jobs—so much so that they have cancelled next year’s legislative programme. In closing, my call to the Government Benches is this: stop being fixated on fighting with the EU and get on with your day job of governing this country.

Richard Bacon: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I always think that a time limit is good for focusing the mind and generating extra productivity, so I will adhere to your strictures.
The Government said in their Queens’ Speech that they want to build more houses, which is an approach I strongly support. The title of the recent housing White Paper is “Fixing our broken housing market”—an important title and an admission of something that has been increasingly clear for many decades under Governments of all parties: our housing market simply does not work properly. The supply of housing does not rise to meet demand. [Interruption.] I see the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) nodding, and I am glad that he is nodding; I hope to persuade him of some of the solutions on which he is still resisting my charms. I am sure that I will get there over the course of this Parliament.
The fact is that our broken housing market is failing to meet aspirations. In effect, demand is unable to influence supply and drive volumes in the way that it does in markets that operate successfully. Some years ago in a Committee Room upstairs, the presenter of “Grand Designs”, the famous Channel 4 television programme, told our all-party parliamentary group on self-build, custom and community housebuilding and place-making:
“The consumer has been on the receiving end of a pretty poor deal. We build some of the poorest, most expensive and smallest homes in Europe. That’s not something to celebrate.”
At the core of the housing debate is a key intellectual problem: is development good or bad? We often see the word development used as a pejorative term, yet the instinct that we all have to nest and to build a home is a response to one of our deepest human needs. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you were to go on a survival course, you would be taught that without food you would die within seven to 10 days and that without water you may last three days, but you can die without shelter in 20 minutes. However, we often talk about development, which means providing enough shelter for everyone, as if it is a bad thing.
During a general election debate, one of my opponents said that housing—although she admitted that it was necessary—was a “heavy price to pay”. I understand that language even if I disagree with it. The reason people so often speak about development in that way is because it is driven and brought forward in the wrong way. It should be obvious that without enough housing the chances of our children and grandchildren finding a home that they can actually afford are rapidly fading from view. In order to make “development” a good word, we have to have good development.

John Howell: Does my hon. Friend accept that one way of driving forward house building is through neighbourhood plans? They are delivering more houses than originally set out by the district councils that instructed councils to build houses.

Richard Bacon: I thank my hon. Friend for that and agree with him, although the caveat is that some developers are good at getting around neighbourhood plans, undermining their basis and confidence in them. The Government need to address that.
The key to getting the right kind of development is more choice and beauty. Now, that may sound airy-fairy, but it is the exact opposite, something which the Prince of Wales noted in his BIMBY or “Beauty-In-My-Back-Yard” campaign. We must have better, smarter, beautiful  development that offers a wide range of real choices to consumers and is actively welcomed by existing communities, including the grandparents and parents who so often oppose development with arms folded saying, “We don’t want any houses in our area.” They want to see the next generation flourish and do well and see their own grandchildren adequately housed. We must allow our communities greater voice and choice about what gets built, where it is built, what it looks like and who gets first chance to live there.

Richard Bacon: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As recently as 1988, 66% of housing in this country was built by small local builders. There has been a huge change that has benefited a small number of large companies, but not our communities or most of our constituents or society as a whole.
My hon. Friend mentioned self-build and it will not surprise him to know that I sponsored, got through this House and the other place and secured Royal Assent for the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, which has now been strengthened by the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Some 53% of people in this country would, at some point in their lives, like to build their own house or have someone build a house to their design. Government policy should not just take account of that, but embrace it and make it as easy as possible.
All my Act does is require local authorities to keep a register of individuals and what are called “associations of individuals” who want to get a serviced plot of land to build a house. An “association of individuals” could be anyone: a group of friends; the governors of a school looking to provide accommodation to help recruit and retain teachers in difficult-to-fill subjects; or the Royal British Legion or a similar veterans’ body, such as Help for Heroes, working with veterans to fulfil their accommodation needs—[Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) nodding and I am pleased to see her in her place. An association of individuals could include the directors of a social services department looking to provide accommodation to help recruit and retain social workers in parts of the country where jobs are difficult to fill. My act has now been strengthened by sections 9 to 12 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which requires local authorities not only to keep a register but, crucially, to provide enough suitable development permissions to meet the demand on the register.
I turn again to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, because I do not think that he is fully persuaded of how powerful such measures could be. The Dutch expert group will be imitated by the right to build expert taskforce being launched at the end of the month at a housing conference in, funnily enough, my  constituency. The taskforce will take the lessons that have been learned in the Netherlands. If we were building as many units of self-build and custom house building as they are in the Netherlands now, we would be creating 60,000 extra units a year on top of what is currently being delivered, which could make a significant difference.
I have two requests of the Government. First, paragraph 2.19 of the housing White Paper states:
“We will target the £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund at the areas of greatest housing need. We will open this capital grant programme to bids in 2017… We will fund those bids that unlock the most homes in the areas of greatest housing need.”
Amen to that, but we need the details to be announced. I understand that they have not been announced due to the general election, but it needs to happen soon.
Secondly, the Government should adopt the 10-point plan of the National Custom & Self Build Association—point two in particular—which calls for a help to build equity loan scheme to help people get their own house. A deposit of just 5% is required to buy a home under the Help to Buy scheme, although that does not create any more dwellings; it just helps volume house builders to sell the houses that they have already built. I will happily provide the Government with what NaCSBA has proposed. A help to build scheme would ensure that an extra house was built. Moreover, one could recycle the money because, in most cases, as soon as the house is built the owner could re-mortgage, and the equity loan could be paid back and would be available to lend to somebody else.
The final thing that I want to say in the 30 seconds that remain is that our party did not reach out during the recent general election to young people in the way that it should reach out. However, it is true that all people, but young people in particular, need somewhere to live. It is absolutely fundamental. In many cases, young people have given up on the prospect of ever having their own place. We have to make owning a house a reality. The architect Rod Hackney once said:
“It is a dangerous thing to underestimate human potential and the energy which can be generated when people are given the opportunity to help themselves.”

Emma Dent Coad: As the first Labour MP in Kensington, I am walking in the footsteps of giants. Although the boundaries have changed over the years, the charismatic figures of Alan Clark, Michael Portillo, who shares my Spanish heritage, and Malcolm Rifkind have created their own legacy, and I am grateful to my immediate predecessor, Victoria Borwick, for showing the way with her impressive social and organising skills, which I will never emulate.
I was born in Chelsea, went to school in Hammersmith and have lived in North Kensington for half my life; the constituency is in my DNA. As MP for both Harrods and the Notting Hill carnival, I hope to ensure that all my communities are cared for. I know, because I have spoken to many of them, that the good people of South Kensington have had their eyes opened in the past week and are asking the same questions that we are asking in North Kensington. The horror and fear of this man-made catastrophe will be etched in all our hearts forever. The tears may never stop, and I know that from the grief etched on the faces of people in Ladbroke Grove and from the total strangers approaching me for comfort,  reassurance, a question, a hug, to share their fears and disbelief that such horror could be visited upon our neighbourhood. The burnt-out carcase of Grenfell Tower and all that it represents, lowers over us, and we have the Red Cross managing a relief programme—in Kensington.
It has been said before that tenants of Grenfell, and of other council and housing association properties, have been voicing their very serious and evidenced concerns about poor and diminishing housing standards, and about how appeals, complaints and petitions have been ignored and discredited. I have witnessed over the years the deterioration, and perhaps even the deliberate managed decline, of social housing; the frustration of a minority party councillor is huge. Eleven Labour councillors in Kensington and Chelsea Council listened to the concerns, put them forward and shouted out for their residents, but they are a minority; decisions are made in cabinet, where Labour has no representation. In my 11 years as a councillor in the community where I was born and bred, I have seen housing conditions that are simply shocking: homes growing toxic black mould; five children squeezed on mattresses in one bedroom; homework done in relays; chronic health problems such as asthma, with children being carted off to hospital at night; malnutrition rife; and the simple day-to-day organisation of clean clothes, food and personal cleanliness being carried out in rotas to allow a semblance of respectability. Child poverty in Kensington is just the same as child poverty in Lanark and Hamilton East. It is 25%—in Kensington.
People are proud. I have seen families coming out of disgracefully overcrowded and unhealthy homes who seem organised, clean and in control, however stressed and tired they are. I have had late night emails from one teenager who has been sitting on the stairs to complete her GCSE homework when her family had gone to sleep—this was the only time she could do it. I have visited a proud and ambitious family where four children, including teenagers of opposite genders, shared a bedroom. I have visited a very dear and confused elderly woman who had been living in darkness for weeks as her electricity ring main had blown and she was too afraid of strangers to let repair workers in. All these issues and more occurred in Grenfell Tower, including power surges that blew all the electrical devices, yet the residents’ protestations were ignored, and the so-called “frequent complainers” were blacklisted. By what process of deregulation and the bonfire of red tape was this disaster allowed to happen?
Some people seem to think that social tenants have no right to live in an area such as “desirable” Kensington. Some people demonstrate a total lack of empathy or even respect for those not born to a world where basic human comforts and a good education are givens. Some people think that social tenants should simply move away if they don’t like what they’ve been “given” and that housing people on low incomes in the inner city, which they serve through their labour, is not a public good, but some kind of privilege to which they are not really entitled.
So we have heard, after this disaster, that voluntary groups and charities have “stepped up” to deal with this and that they are wonderful—and indeed they are. But I want to live in a world where charities do not exist, and where volunteers are not needed to fill the yawning gaps where local services have been cut or withdrawn, to be  replaced, as they are in Kensington, by prep schools. People of all backgrounds should be safe in their beds, have food in the fridge and shoes of the right size on their children’s feet; the basic human needs cannot be met in a world of charities, food banks and handouts. In a council with a third of a billion pounds in reserves, I do not understand how this can be.
The burnt carcase of Grenfell Tower speaks for itself and has revealed the true face of Kensington—the mask has dropped. We have poverty, malnutrition, overcrowding, poor maintenance and, underlying this, a lack of care. The people who have been failed want justice and accountability, and an honest and transparent process to achieve it. We all now have to step up to ensure that we live in a world where a terrible and avoidable tragedy such as the fire of Grenfell Tower never happens again. South Kensington has stood with North Kensington, and we will work together to achieve that, as I will, as the first Labour MP for Kensington.

Rebecca Pow: First, I wish to praise the words of my new colleague, the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). What a week it has been for her to start as a new MP. When I first started I had to deal with the possibility of the hydrographic UK business moving out of my constituency, which I thought was a big job to deal with, but it is as nothing compared with what she has had to deal with. I can only reiterate the comments made this morning by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition crediting the fine work that the hon. Lady has done, and so I thank her.
Let me turn to today’s debate. Although we face issues in places such as Kensington, on the whole this Government’s record on housing has been good, and I want to talk about that. Investment in housing has now doubled to more than £20 billion to support the largest affordable housing programme by any Government since the 1970s, and we have seen this in my constituency. The Government have delivered more than 300,000 affordable homes since 2010. When the coalition Government came into power in 2010, house building was at its lowest level since the 1920s. We cannot escape the fact that for years the Labour Government did not address that, which has exacerbated the situation we now find ourselves in. However, I always say that there is always room to do more, because everybody deserves a home of their own. While on the issue of housing, I want to pay tribute to the former Housing Minister and Member for Croydon Central. I had the pleasure of working closely with him during the last Parliament and he was a fantastic champion for the housing industry. He will be sorely missed, but this is only Downing Street’s gain.
I want to talk about the renewed commitment to housing supply in the Queen’s Speech. Thousands of new homes are being built in my constituency, many of them in new estates. I knocked on the door of hundreds during the election campaign, from Monkton Heathfield to Killams, Wellington to Wiveliscombe, and I was very struck by the type of people benefiting from the Conservative policies and the investment in housing that has enabled the building of all these properties. Undoubtedly, the people living in them are, on the whole, first-time buyers; they are young people, often  with young families. Those are the kinds of people this Government are helping, especially through our Help to Buy schemes. There are all manner of schemes under which one can now get into owning a property—or a bit of it or a share of it. There are so many different schemes and they are very popular. There are great advantages to buying or moving into a new home, because they are energy-efficient and they cost less to run.
Let us not forget that the people living in all these houses, particularly those around Taunton Deane, all have jobs and are all working in the constituency. They are all contributing to the economy and paying their taxes—low taxes I might add, to which we are committed in the Gracious Speech, unlike the Labour party. All of this is working for the economy as a whole. One thing I have noticed is that among these new housing developments we need to address the infrastructure and the traffic generated by all these new homes. We need to make sure we get the right facilities in the right places to accompany all these houses. I am very pleased that in the last two years I have been able to be part of a group of stakeholders that has managed to attract an incredible £300 million to Taunton Deane, largely for these infrastructure projects. That will make these developments much more viable. We have the developments at the Toneway, Creech Castle and the railway station, and they will all help to make the economy work and to make people’s lives more sustainable. We also now have garden town status, which I played a role in securing. With that, Taunton Deane will now be able to bid into the £2.3 billion housing infrastructure pot of money, to make these homes and the whole infrastructure around them more sustainable. So it is very important that we build the right homes in the right places and make them sustainable.
The excellent housing White Paper contains lots of ideas about the types of homes in which we might live: should we have container homes, or homes on water, for instance? We need to take great care if we are going to build up, as we know from the recent tragic events. Careful thought needs to be given to these matters, but we have got the building regulations and building controls. We have established an effective, new, high-quality system that will enable us to live in the homes that we want, and with sustainable drainage, because in Somerset flooding is a big issue so I urge the Housing Minister to be very conscious of including that as well. I applaud the introduction of the electric vehicles Bill, because all these initiatives will help to make our neighbourhoods better places in which to live.
Finally, I look forward to the introduction of the agriculture Bill. I hope we will build into this new Bill not only a Brexit that works for all of our land use and agriculture—because this is a huge industry—but measures that work for the environment, too. We must attract and bring in all the environmental protections that we need to make our country sustainable. That brings us back to housing, because, of course, without a sustainable environment we do not have a sustainable future.
I welcome the Queen’s Gracious Speech; I welcome everything in it to make Brexit work and the fact that we will have the tools in place to continue to have a positive economy moving forward.

Steve McCabe: Like many others, I had expected a little more from this Queen’s Speech. On the key point regarding the repeal of the European Communities Act, the certainty and assurance my constituents want to see is that there will be no loss of rights or protections as a result of leaving the EU. The last thing our country needs right now is a bunch of “here today, gone tomorrow” Ministers blundering around undoing the rights and safeguards on which the British people depend for protections at work, human rights, environmental security and economic wellbeing.
One thing is clear: we do not need to hear any more nonsense about extensive use of secondary legislation or Henry VIII powers, as this Parliament has plenty of time to debate these issues. As we reflect on whether contempt for regulation played any part in the Grenfell tragedy, the last thing we want is to see our water and air standards reduced and food safety compromised because of the behaviour of those who fundamentally reject precautionary principles or the idea that the polluter pays.
If part of my job is to reflect the concerns of my constituents, then it is only fair that I point out that in a recent survey I undertook with the people of Selly Oak, they were very clear that their No. 1 concern was housing and homelessness. That is perhaps not surprising when we can barely move in Birmingham these days without coming across someone sleeping in a shop doorway. The problem is not confined to the city centre; it is rife across the suburbs and the same all over the country. It is a consequence of an obsession with austerity. In some cases it is a direct result of the Government’s pointless meddling with the Supporting People programme, heartless and botched attacks on local authority spending, and ill-considered welfare changes. My advice centres are full of people with housing problems: a mother with two children who has been forced to sleep on the floor of her parents’ two-bedroom house for over three years; the man whose bedroom is covered in black mould; repairs that never get done; or the woman who contacted me to say that she and her three-year-old son had been subjected to carbon monoxide poisoning courtesy of a flue that had not been properly connected to a boiler despite the work being signed off by the landlord’s gas engineer.
This Queen’s Speech should be setting out to make these problems a priority. We need the law to be simplified so that there are powers to utilise land that has been banked by individuals or organisations. We need permissive powers to encourage funding opportunities so that, as well as traditional build, there is scope for smaller developments, community build, and high-quality, healthy and environmentally modern systems. We need to be certain that this Government are now serious about building such housing and ending the scandal of homelessness.
Of course, rather than being shy of regulation, we need to tackle rogue landlords and developers, whether we are talking about council and social housing or the private sector. Last year, the Government had an opportunity to look at my Protection of Family Homes (Enforcement and Permitted Development) Bill, which warned of the dangers of rogue building and conversions. Perhaps if the Government had spent a little more time  listening and a little less time talking it out, their minds would have been a little more focused on issues of safety and regulation. I hope that I will be able to give them another opportunity in this Parliament, but we should not be waiting for a private Member’s Bill; providing protection for tenants and homeowners against rogue landlords and developers should be a Government priority.
Of course, with so little else to address in this Queen’s Speech, I thought we might have seen an offer to revisit the plight of the WASPI women. If the transitional arrangements in the form of pension credits are not the answer for these women, who are being punished through no fault of their own, what is the answer? It surely cannot be to wait until their numbers dwindle through age and ill health. This is an injustice for all to see. Why not have a short piece of legislation to tackle it now? And while we are at it, where is the promise to straighten out the mess that is affecting disabled people and the scandal of personal independence payments? How many people have to go hungry, suffer a breakdown, get into mountains of debt and lose their entire self-respect before this Government recognise that there is a world of difference between helping those who can work into work and setting arbitrary targets based on bonus payments for private companies that strip the poor, the sick and disabled of support to which any civilised society would see them as rightfully entitled?
We heard a bit yesterday from the mover of the Gracious Speech about his wish for a fairer, more just society. I want that as well. So how am I to explain to my constituents that the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company now earns 144 times the average salary? How do we compare that with cuts to in-work benefits and pay freezes for low-paid workers? Why are the Government not doing something to tackle that? What about introducing a compulsory living wage—and these people on high salaries can certainly afford to pay tax on a salary of that level?

John Lamont: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to deliver my maiden speech during such an important debate on the future of our country. The challenges ahead of us all are indeed profound.
Representing much of the Scottish borders for 10 years in my previous role as a Member of the Scottish Parliament was a great honour and privilege. Now, as the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, I find myself once again humbled by the trust and confidence placed in me by my constituents. I am deeply grateful for their support and promise to work as hard as I possibly can to represent them, regardless of their party politics.
I count myself very lucky to live in and represent one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom—if not the most beautiful. Due to the rural nature of the constituency, it is one of the larger areas represented in this House. With size, comes great diversity: fishing communities like Eyemouth on the Berwickshire coast, paired with distinct and historic towns such as Duns, Coldstream, Hawick, Selkirk, St Boswells, Jedburgh, Newcastleton and Kelso; and then out to the valleys of the remote communities of Ettrick and Yarrow.
My new constituency includes the towns of Galashiels, Melrose, Earlston and Lauder, which I did not have the pleasure of representing in my previous role in the Scottish Parliament. For those who do not know this part of Scotland, all these border towns, and the lands that surround them, are famed for their beauty. Their history runs deep, as is clearly apparent in the centuries-old common ridings and festivals that are held every year in many towns throughout the borders. We also have the glorious home of Sir Walter Scott, Abbotsford house, on the banks of the mighty River Tweed.
Of course, the rural and diverse nature of the constituency provides us with many challenges. I will make it my mission in this place to improve broadband connectivity, thus ensuring that businesses can thrive and compete with the more urban areas of these islands. Similarly, I will make the creation of an environment that allows for job creation a priority. In my view, creating good and well-paid jobs is the best way of lifting people out of poverty. Effective and sustainable transport links—including the extension of the borders railway to Hawick and on to Carlisle—together with better broadband connectivity and improvements to other infrastructure, will be the key to pursuing that aim.
The challenges and opportunities thrown up by Brexit for my constituents—especially export businesses, farmers and fishermen—will be of fundamental importance over the coming years. I will work tirelessly to help to ensure that we come out of the process even stronger and even more together than we are now. Specifically, I look forward to working with the Government on establishing the borderlands growth deal, which will not only secure economic prosperity but deepen ties between communities in southern Scotland and northern England. Our communities may be divided by a border line marked on the map, but we share many of the same challenges, and the borderlands growth deal will give us the opportunity to tackle them together.
Speaking in this great Chamber today, I am struck by the importance of effective parliamentary democracy. Most of all, though, I am reminded of the significant contributions that my predecessors have made to this place. I know that my immediate predecessor, Calum Kerr, worked hard to ensure that the voice of Borderers was heard. We had differing views on big political issues of the day, but he is proud of his border roots and his contributions here were evidence of that. I wish him and his family well for the future. Before him, Michael Moore represented the constituency for 18 years. Such long service and loyalty to the borders will not be forgotten any time soon. His time as Secretary of State for Scotland at such a crucial time in our Union’s history, and his successful private Member’s Bill on the international aid target, show that his influence was not confined to the borders. I pay tribute to him, too.
As I mentioned, the borders is steeped in history and tradition. The foremost examples of this are our common ridings and festivals, which are currently getting under way throughout the borders. All the towns have their own distinct form of celebration and commemoration. However, one things remains constant: all are a celebration of identity and pride, and all allow those who gather a chance to reflect on those who have gone before them. Although a celebration of individuality, the events that take place in each town tie the people of the borderlands together in a show of pride and commonality.
In Selkirk’s common riding, which took place last week, the focus, as at many of these events, is on the battle of Flodden in 1513, when 80 people from Selkirk—known as Souters—went to fight for King James IV against the English. The King was killed in battle, becoming the last monarch from these isles to die in battle, and only one Souter returned. That reminds us that for centuries, whether at war with each other or side by side in war, the nations of our great country have always been intertwined, and our deep, lasting ties are impossible to disentangle.
Our common ridings and festivals, which display such pride in one’s identity yet symbolise an overarching feeling of unity, are striking. Pair that with the rich history that all the nations of our Union share, and it is clear to me that we have much more in common than not—that we are, together, worth more than apart. Perhaps that is clearer now than it has ever been in recent times. Such values are what we all must fight for. I look forward to playing my part as the member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. Once again, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to you for allowing me to speak today, and to my constituents for electing me to this place. I hope to do my best in this Parliament for the borders, for Scotland, and for all of our United Kingdom.

Jim Shannon: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Open Doors does excellent work, and I am aware of it day to day. There are many organisations in the House, but Open Doors also takes the opportunity to stand up for and talk to people around the world.
So-called Islamic State has nearly succeeded in its attempt to eradicate the Christian communities of Iraq and Syria; the Christian population has plummeted from 1 million to 200,000 in Iraq, and from 1.25 million to 500,000 in Syria. Many Christians remain displaced and face discrimination that prevents them from gaining equal access to food, shelter, education and work. In May, 122 Christians in Eritrea were rounded up from their homes and detained, including disabled people and entire families. That escalation in the crackdown on Christians coincides with the Orthodox archbishop’s 10th year under incommunicado house arrest.
In April we saw the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to declare the Christian sect Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organisation, banning their headquarters and all 395 local organisations from operating and ordering their property to be seized by the state. That shows a clear escalation.
In Pakistan, only last week a Shi’ite man, Taimoor Raza, was charged with blasphemy and handed the death sentence, contrary to international law. That underlines the issues there. In Myanmar, since 2012 over 168,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the country because of attacks by the military, including the burning of homes and the raping of women. Those are vile, evil, wicked deeds, and in some cases they are carried out by the Government.
Advancing freedom of religion or belief between faith communities helps to build tolerant and cohesive communities. I believe that it is a crucial component of Government policy, not only in preventing further violent attacks on people because of their faith, but in preventing violent extremism and achieving the sustainable development goals. There is a role to play for the Department for International Development, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and, I believe, the Ministry of Defence. I am pleased to see the Minister for Disabled  People, Health and Work on the Government Front Bench. This is not her responsibility, but I know that she will take my points on board.
The Government’s recent manifesto declared that they would
“expand our global efforts to combat…violence against people because of their faith”.
The Prime Minister has made a commitment to stand up for the freedom of people of all religions to practise their beliefs openly and in peace and safety. Perhaps the Minister responsible will clarify what those measures will be. For example, will they ensure that displaced communities in Iraq and Syria can return home safely? I offer the Government the APPG’s assistance in taking those measures forward.
As part of its membership of the EU, the UK has routinely asserted its commitment to promoting the right to freedom of religion or belief as part of its global human rights diplomacy. The UK regularly reports on its implementation of the EU guidelines for freedom of religion or belief and has made further commitments within the EU human rights framework. I ask the Minister responsible whether Her Majesty’s Government will retain the commitment to monitor and report their implementation of freedom of religion or belief through their representatives globally. I urge the Government to deepen their work with multilateral organisations such as the Commonwealth and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
I believe that the Government are committed to that in some of their policies, but I am seeking an assurance because it was not mentioned specifically in the Queen’s Speech, and I think it is important that we put down a marker now. There are many things that we would wish to see happen. This matter is very close to my heart, as it is to the hearts of many people across the whole United Kingdom. The fact that people are intimidated because of their religious beliefs, having to live in endangered neighbourhoods, or even killed, indicates how important this issue is.
I want to mention a few other things that also concern me. There are many aspects of Brexit that we wish to support and take forward. I commend the financial guidance and claims Bill. Age UK recently contributed to the Government’s consultation on the future of the Money Advice Service, the Pensions Advisory Service and Pension Wise. I support the proposal to create one agency, which I think would be a step in the right direction, as the Government have recognised. I also welcome the smart meters Bill, which I believe will help older people to manage their energy costs. We should support that initiative. There are many other issues that we also need to work on.
The votes are in and the Government are in place. The agreement between the DUP and the Government is not just done yet, so let us see how that goes, but we look forward to carrying out the business of this House for all our constituents in the years to come.

Richard Drax: It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I also congratulate my new colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), on his excellent maiden speech. Well done; brilliant!
Violence driven by hatred and intolerance have blighted our country in recent weeks, and the ghastly fire at Grenfell tower has only heightened a growing sense of unease. I have to say that this feeling has been exploited shamelessly by some for political gain, and I find that totally inappropriate. I would like to place on the record the fact that I have the highest admiration for the Prime Minister, who was knocked first one way and then the other by events over which she had no control. Her apology to the House yesterday and today for the failure of both local and national Government to respond appropriately to the fire was delivered with great humility and should be welcomed.
Naturally, Brexit dominated much of the Queen’s Speech, and rightly so. We have a challenge ahead of us over the next two years, and one that we will rise to. I am a little tired of the siren voices, both in this place and in the media, for the decision to leave the EU has been made, and now it is time to get right behind UK plc. Of course jobs and our future prosperity must be key factors in future negotiations, but which idiot of a bureaucrat or politician would purposefully punish the UK by placing obstacles in the way of the free trade on which both we and the EU rely so heavily? I am confident that common sense and pragmatism will prevail against those wishing to prop up a failing political project. Let us face it: scores of countries already have access to EU markets, so why can’t we?
The future is exciting and prosperity beckons as we reach out to countries around the world for new trade deals. I was saddened that we did not hear more from the Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade during the election. He has much to sing about and all of it encouraging.
To ensure that our overseas exploits are a success, we really must secure our finances back home. The elephant in the room is our massive debt of about £1.9 trillion. The interest alone to service this elephant is circa £47 billion—just imagine what we could do with that money.
I also wish that we had a simplified tax system, as it gets more complicated with every Budget. The easier the taxes are to collect and the lower they are, the more money the Government will find. I welcome the Government’s commitment to spend at least 2% of our national income on defence—the NATO minimum—but, as I have argued in this place for the past seven years, that is not enough. It was over 5% in my time, and even then retaking the Falklands was touch and go. We often hear people say that the UK tries to punch above her weight. Yes, we do. As a beacon of freedom, hope and democracy, we have frequently been called on to do our duty around the world, which does not come cheap. I call on the Government to spend more on defence, especially as we face uncertain times and do not want to be caught napping again.
Internal security also concerns me. As a former soldier who served in Northern Ireland on three operational tours, I know how important it is to have a uniformed presence on the streets. It not only reassures residents, but dominates the ground on which the terrorist wants to operate. Similarly, more police on the streets would do the same. I appreciate that the nature of crime has changed. Online crime, for example, consumes much police time and officers, but community policing is just as important and, frankly, it is where much of the intelligence should and must come from to tackle crime.
On education, I must repeat my call for fairer funding for schools, especially in a rural constituency such as mine in South Dorset. I accept that there are now more good and outstanding schools, and that is to be recognised —people must be congratulated on that—but the current funding formula is really not fair. We do not want all the cake in South Dorset, just a fairer share of it.
The vexed question of climate change is my next observation. Although no one would argue with the need to break away from our reliance on fossil fuels, there has to be an affordable and workable alternative that keeps our economy turning and the lights on. Yes, renewables must play a part, but phasing out our coal and gas-fired power stations could be a “monstrous act of self-harm”, according to Nick Timothy, the former aide to the Prime Minister. Interestingly, the Office for Budget Responsibility says that soaring green subsidies and levies are due to virtually double during this Parliament to £14.7 billion a year. Those are paid through our energy bills. We really need a credible approach to our future energy needs, and setting unrealistic and potentially damaging targets is not a sensible way forward.
On overseas aid, I am afraid that I do not agree with the arbitrary 0.7% target. Yes, we should help those who need help, but we need help in this country, too. Charity starts at home. I want the money that we send—taxpayers’ money—better targeted, and the money that we do not send spent on very good causes in this country.

Stephen Lloyd: I wish to associate myself with the earlier comments from the Front Benches on the Grenfell Tower tragedy. I also wish to congratulate the right hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Gauke) on his appointment as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. I am glad to be back, and, as I have been appointed the Liberal Democrat spokesman on work and pensions, I shall be having numerous conversations with him. Today, there are four particular aspects of social services on which I want to focus. There is an awful lot to cover, but I shall restrict myself to four: universal credit, WRAG, WASPI and PIP.
When I was thinking of those four this morning in preparation for my speech—I was involved with all of them during the coalition, to a greater or lesser extent, often trying to improve or change things—I saw that they were shocking combinations of poor quality. Universal credit has poor-quality policy. I remember years ago, under the coalition Government, when it was first mooted, that I supported the concept of bringing all benefits together to one point of contact. That would be more sensible for the recipient. The key, though, was the taper. I was very disappointed that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who now edits the Evening Standard, insisted on an absolutely ludicrous taper that means that people on universal credit are barely better off in a low-paid job than they are on benefit, which defeats the whole purpose of universal credit. I look forward to the new Secretary of State using his charm with his close colleague, the current Chancellor, to get a more intelligent taper. Without that, universal credit is doomed to fail, and we all know in this Chamber the problems people already face with its delivery. The taper was bad policy.
WRAG is an acronym for work-related activity group, and is meant for disabled people who have had a disability or have had a disability for quite some time and who believe that they can—and the DWP believes that they can—get back into jobs, with the correct levels of support. That is something that I am passionate about, and that I was passionate about when I was last in this House. From April of this year, the Government took a decision to reduce the income of those in the WRAG by almost 30%. Anyone with any experience of disability at all will know that if someone has been disabled for quite some time, they can get out of the habit of getting into work. It takes a bit of support to get them back into employment, so they go into the WRAG. To then cut their income by 30%—folks, we know what will happen. People will do their darnedest to stay in the support group, which means that they do not get back into jobs. I think that that was a stupid decision by the Government.
Thirdly, on the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, this decision was profoundly unfair. My partner, if she will forgive me for giving her broad age to the Chamber, is one of those affected. Many women between 55 and 58 across the United Kingdom are affected and it is profoundly unfair. We hear that under the new consensual approach to government the Conservatives are ready to loosen the austerity strings, to listen more to people and to be fairer, and I would urge them to have the WASPI women at the top of the list for reconsideration.
Last but not least is PIP, or the personal independence payment. Again, I am very frustrated because I worked hard with Lord Freud in the other place to try to get PIP to work. The concept is about individual personal income, allowing people with disabilities to control the money they have and use it in the right way. The concept is good, but then guess what happens? I go and lose the election in 2015—I am sure that I am far too insignificant to have made any difference at all, but PIP has not improved things. We are still getting a high rate of people failing the work capability assessment and going to tribunal; more than 80% of them are winning, which means that PIP is not working and the delivery of PIP is not working.
Over the coming years—however long this Session lasts—I am looking forward to working with the Government in a spirit of compromise to improve these areas of the DWP and its remit so that it delivers what it is supposed to deliver: fairness, equity and ease of access. The latter is terribly important when someone has been on benefits for a long time, as there must be a smooth transition of funds.
On the pension side, I am delighted that the Conservative manifesto pledge to get rid of the triple lock was dropped in the Queen’s Speech. I remind the House that it was the Liberal Democrats in coalition who brought in the triple lock pension, so I am glad that despite those halcyon days the Conservatives are finally listening to the Lib Dems and have retained the triple lock.
Most importantly of all, it is good to be back. I pay tribute to my predecessor, who I know fought valiantly for Eastbourne. For me, it is a pleasure.

Leo Docherty: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), and I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the  Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on his very fine maiden speech.
When Her Majesty Queen Victoria granted permission to her military command in 1854 to establish a permanent training camp for the British Army at the village of Aldershot, the foundation was laid not just for a successful garrison, but for a remarkable tradition of service to this country. Since that time, my constituency of Aldershot has been the home of the British Army and, since its foundation more than 160 years ago, thousands of servicemen and women have passed through the garrison while doing their loyal duty to the Crown. Today the garrison is still home to thousands of soldiers and their families: the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment, 4 Rifles and my own regiment, the 1st Battalion Scots Guards. These regiments, as part of 12th Armoured Infantry Brigade, form one of the country’s most deployable and experienced combat units with distinguished service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For many years, Aldershot was home to the Parachute Regiment and British airborne forces. It was from Aldershot in 1982 that the airborne battalions of 2 and 3 Para joined the British taskforce sailing to the south Atlantic to liberate the Falkland Islands from the Argentine invasion. Last Sunday, to mark the 35th anniversary of their victory, our town was honoured to welcome back the surviving veterans of 2 and 3 Para, and the families of the fallen. They were joined by a new generation of serving soldiers and many local people from across our community in a demonstration of the high regard that Aldershot has for the armed forces community and the strong civic bond that exists between the military, the town and the wider borough of Rushmoor. Indeed, the borough has taken creative measures to support our veterans—for example, enabling a £10 million investment from Stoll to provide social housing for vulnerable veterans and help to reduce the alarmingly high levels of homelessness among that group of people.
Another group whose history is intertwined with that of Aldershot and the surrounding area is that of former Gurkha soldiers and their families. Their historic loyalty to our monarch and their immaculate record of courageous service is second to none, and they play a much valued and respected role in our community today. The Nepalese community is particularly active when it comes to charitable fundraising, and many other groups across the borough do exactly the same thing. Our football club, Aldershot Town, is more than just a club. It is a community hub that raises tens of thousands of pounds every year for good causes—as too, do the Rotarians, who are justifiably proud of the annual Rotary club donkey derby in Farnborough, which I recommend to all hon. Members.
Although my constituency is the home of the British Army, it is also the birthplace of British aviation. When Samuel Cody made the first British flight on the heath at Farnborough in 1908, it was the start of a remarkable story of courageous and determined innovation that has now blossomed into a huge global industry. Today, companies such as BAE Systems, TAG Farnborough, QinetiQ and a plethora of highly innovative defence aviation and hi-tech companies in Farnborough and the Blackwater valley employ thousands and earn millions for our Exchequer.
I did not start my life with a particular interest in politics. I started my career as a soldier and I am humbled to come to this place as a parliamentarian. I  know that in my predecessor, Sir Gerald Howarth, I have very large shoes to fill. Sir Gerald is a man of absolute integrity who has dedicated his life to public service, and I have been hugely fortunate to benefit from his kindness and his wise counsel.
The strength of the military presence in my constituency is mirrored by the strength of civic society across Rushmoor borough, and I am proud of that. I am proud that we have a great history and a great future. We are diverse and dynamic. I am proud that we now have the youngest ever mayor of the borough, Councillor Sophia Choudhary, who also happens to be a young Muslim of Kashmiri heritage. I hope to serve my constituents with the same sense of public service, energy and compassion that they themselves display every day of the week across Aldershot, Farnborough, Blackwater and Hawley.
Anyone familiar with my constituency will know that one figure who literally towers over us is the Duke of Wellington. The Iron Duke sits on horseback in massive bronze relief on top of Round Hill. The Iron Duke, never one to be over-patient with politicians, would, I think, have agreed with this nation’s other greatest soldier-turned-statesman, Sir Winston Churchill, who, as a young cavalry officer, lived in Aldershot cavalry barracks before deploying to India. Churchill famously said:
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
On that note, Mr Speaker, I will resume my place.

Karen Buck: I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on a fine maiden speech, and congratulate others who have made maiden speeches today.
I hope I may be forgiven for particularly singling out my hon. Friend the new Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who not only made a fine and moving speech but has had to rise to the kind of challenge that I am not sure anybody has ever had to rise to so soon after being elected to Parliament. Kensington needs her, and she has certainly risen to that challenge in these days. I hope we will all do what we can to support her in the times ahead. I speak with particular feeling because some of the wards in the northern part of the constituency were in my constituency under previous boundaries, as was Grenfell Tower. What she said was therefore particularly powerful and moving for me.
I echo what my hon. Friend and others have said about the extraordinary community response at a time of serious failure in the institutions of the state in the aftermath of the tragedy, including from many constituents in north Westminster, a sister community who have been working tirelessly over the past week to help the victims and survivors of the disaster.
Along with very many other Members of Parliament, my hon. Friend and I have residents living in other tower blocks, many of whom are deeply concerned. I hope that few will have anything like the equivalent level of reason to be concerned, although they will still need reassurance. However, some may need more support and assistance than reassurance. It is absolutely incumbent on us to rise to that challenge.

Karen Buck: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I and others pushed for that during the statement and at other opportunities. The local authorities, the arm’s length management organisations and other providers must have a guarantee. They must have the bills underwritten both for the inspection process and for any remedial works. I think we have nudged closer to that commitment this afternoon, but we still do not have it unequivocally. This is important because local authorities have had their budgets cut very severely, Kensington by 38% in the past five years and my own borough of Westminster by 46%. Local authorities, including the environmental health teams who are so important in this context, have had their budgets cut, and social housing providers have had a rent cut imposed on them, with an impact on housing revenue accounts and on management and maintenance in social housing. That has to be recognised. It was a policy imposed by the Government and it has implications that they need to respond to. That action has to be forthcoming.
The Government will need to demonstrate to us how quickly they can respond to the findings of the inquiry, which cannot be pre-judged, of course, but actions need to be taken even before that. We have spoken about social housing in this context, but we need to remember that many residents in towers and high-rise blocks, even those built by local authorities, are not actually local authority tenants. In many cases, about a third are either leaseholders, or are legally subletting their properties to private tenants. Those people are all in different situations and subject to different regulatory arrangements, and there are real concerns that the fire safety and other standards applying in social housing do not automatically apply to private owners and leaseholders in social housing blocks. That must be urgently addressed by the Government.
In my view, we need to bring into force section 38 of the Building Act 1984, which would allow victims of breaches of building regulations to sue for damages. The Government could move on that. We need to introduce a statutory consultation process applying to tenants when there are major works in buildings. Such a process currently applies to leaseholders, but not to tenants. We need to amend the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 to allow landlords to go into tenanted properties and ensure that fire safety standards are comparable. We also need to impose new obligations on leases to enable landlords to require access for the purpose of making fire safety improvements, and so forth. There are regulatory changes on which the Government could act immediately and urgently—and they must do so—without in any way prejudging the findings of the inquiry and the separate actions that they will need to take afterwards.
I ask the Government to revisit a revised version of the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill—I introduced the proposals as a private Member’s Bill, and the Opposition put them forward as amendments to the Housing and Planning Act 2016—because, particularly in an age of cash-starved local authorities, we need to enable tenants to enforce standards in law  when there is substandard accommodation, as they can currently do with respect to properties in disrepair. This is not about having a new regulatory burden; it is about tenants being able to enforce such standards.
In my last remaining minute I want to raise one other matter. The absolute first priority today must be to house the survivors of the Grenfell Tower tragedy adequately—we must provide them with decent local accommodation—but that must not be at the expense of the needs of other people who are homeless and in desperate housing need, whether in Kensington, Westminster or other parts of London. At the moment, we are in the dire situation that homelessness is rising fast: it has risen by 17% since 2010, and just yesterday we saw figures showing that the number of households in temporary accommodation has risen by a staggering 61% since 2010. As has happened in Kensington and Westminster, many of those families have been moved away from their homes, their children’s schools and their support networks. Social housing is not part of the problem; social housing for these and other people is part of the solution, provided it is properly funded, decent and affordable.

Bambos Charalambous: Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to make my maiden speech today, Mr Speaker. I start by paying tribute to my predecessor, David Burrowes. He dedicated more than 23 years to public service, first as a councillor and then as an MP, showing his commitment and affection for the area. I wish him well in the future.
I also pay tribute to our emergency services, across London and the UK. The recent terror attacks have been abhorrent and terrifying, but our emergency services have responded each and every time with the utmost courage and professionalism. For this they deserve both our praise and gratitude, as they do for their response to the awful tragedy at Grenfell Tower in Kensington. All London grieves deeply for the family and friends of those who sadly lost their lives. I join in thanking and praising the brave people from our emergency services in London who once again ran towards danger.
I am of Cypriot heritage. My parents came here from Cyprus, and English was not my first language, but we made a home in London, and we were welcomed with tolerance and warmth. That is what allowed me to be here today in Parliament to give my maiden speech as the proud new MP for Enfield, Southgate. That is the same welcome that the people of Enfield, Southgate extend to everybody from other nations who lives, works and studies locally. I am proud of our diverse, tolerant and inclusive community, which brings out the best in people. It is precious to us all in Enfield, Southgate in these difficult times, or in any times. We will not allow the preachers of hate to drive a wedge between our community.
Along with the majority of my constituents, I voted to remain in the European Union. I believe, as they do, that we are better off working together, and I believe that people from countries across the European Union should be allowed to live, work and study in London. I wish the result had been different, but we must now face the reality, and I will do all I can to campaign for the best deal we can get.
We are very proud of our local history and institutions in Enfield, Southgate. We are lucky to have the Chickenshed theatre, set up by Jo Collins and Mary Ward, with the assistance of John Bull, which has been running for more than 40 years. What a success story. It leads the field in breaking down barriers, promoting diversity and tackling discrimination. Chickenshed has given many young people hope, a fantastic experience and the confidence that they can succeed irrespective of background, ethnicity, or disability.
Many people know the Piccadilly line in London, with its iconic art deco stations at Arnos Grove, Southgate, Oakwood and Cockfosters in my constituency. Designed by the renowned architect Charles Holden, they were built in the early 1930s, and these transport links, along with the Great Northern rail line joining Bowes Park, Palmers Green, Winchmore Hill and Grange Park, led to the subsequent housing boom that made Enfield, Southgate the place it is today—the place I am beyond proud to represent, here in the mother of all Parliaments.
Those transport links were one reason why many people flocked to Enfield in the 1930s; later, in 1971, when I was just three years old, my parents made Southgate their home. At school in Enfield, encouraged by some incredibly dedicated and knowledgeable teachers, I developed a love for reading that has stayed with me. Enfield, Southgate has been fortunate in having a connection to a string of literary figures, including Sir John Betjeman, Thomas Hood, Leigh Hunt, Jerome K. Jerome and, of course, Stevie Smith. However, contrary to what I told my teachers, I do not admit to having read them all.
Education is the cornerstone of success in life. It plays a key part in breaking down inequalities and promoting tolerance and understanding, but unless we invest in our schools and our children, those aims will be lost. We have some fine schools in Enfield, Southgate, including both St Michael at Bowes Church of England Junior School and Eversley Primary School, for both of which I am a governor, and Hazelwood Primary School. However, the majority of our schools face Government funding cuts that will harm the prospects of many young people in my constituency. All children get only one chance to have a decent education. I was lucky enough to get that opportunity and I seized it. I want the same chances for our young people, which is why I will challenge the cuts to education funding and champion a properly funded education system.
Enfield, Southgate also has a place in suffragette history. When Hazelwood Primary School opened in 1908, its first headmistress was Laura Goulden, the sister-in-law of Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union. It is no coincidence, then, that between 1910 and 1913 there was a well-established and active local suffragette movement that gathered at the famous Palmers Green triangle. I am proud that the people of Enfield, Southgate played their part in supporting votes for women—but votes are not enough. We still have huge inequality, women still earn less than men, and in Enfield, Southgate, just as elsewhere, women have borne the brunt of the Government’s austerity agenda. I will do my utmost to push for fair and equal pay and a decent living wage for everyone.
Inequality is also increasingly prevalent in our health services. It was a body blow for our area when Chase Farm hospital’s accident and emergency unit closed. Since then,mounting pressure on North Middlesex hospital’s A&E unit is pushing it to breaking point. This cannot go on. The people of Enfield Southgate deserve better. I will not sit back and allow our precious NHS to be destroyed. It needs a massive tonic, and it needs it now.
I am here because my constituents have put their faith in me. They know I am one of them. I grew up among them, I live among them and I will not let them down.

Zac Goldsmith: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) who made a brilliant maiden speech. I am grateful for having been here for most of the maiden speeches today. I wondered whether I qualified to make one, but apparently not. I see Mr Speaker shaking his head—this is therefore not a maiden speech. [Interruption.] Absolutely right—you can’t be a maiden twice.
Before I say a few words about housing, today’s main topic, I want to join hon. Members in sending my condolences to the families who have been torn apart in the disaster that affected London only a couple of weeks ago.
Housing shortage is undoubtedly acute. The word “crisis” is often overused in politics, but it is a crisis, particularly in London, where the demand is highest. We have reached a point where someone could be earning double the average London salary and still have no prospect of owning a home. The average home here costs around £500,000, which is 12 times the average income in this city. Young people in particular have been locked out. The fact that they have to pay exorbitant rents means that they are even less likely to realise their dream. Without urgent action now, the problem will get even worse—the population of London is likely to hit 10 million in around 15 years.
I was therefore pleased by the emphasis in the manifesto on tackling the problem: the commitment to deliver a million homes by 2021 and to double the housing budget to £20 billion. However, we need to get on and do it, and there are some clear priorities. We need to deal with the fact that there are so many empty homes. It is true that, as we heard from the Prime Minister earlier, the number is at its lowest for many years, but it is still too high. The Empty Homes Agency puts the figure in London alone at 60,000, and it may be higher.
We need to get more competition into the sector, which has become effectively an oligopoly—a tiny number of giant developers accounting for the vast bulk of the development and demanding huge returns based on often spurious viability tests. We need to accelerate the release of publicly-owned land. Developers always press Governments to relax protections of our green spaces, but we do not need to do that, and we should not. In London, where the need is greatest, we have huge tracts of publicly-owned brownfield land that could be developed. Transport for London alone has the equivalent of 16 Hyde Parks. As we build on publicly-owned land—land that we own—we can and must ensure that the new homes are not simply sold off to overseas investors and left empty. We have to solve the problem that we face in this country.
There is something else that we need to do—something that has taken on a grim new relevance. Across the capital, we have tower blocks that were rushed and poorly designed, many of which are coming to the end of their lives. There is a growing realisation that we now have an obligation to rethink our approach. I want to focus briefly on one aspect of that.
We know that a low-rise, high-density, street-based design provides more homes because it makes better use of the available space. The estate agent Savills did a detailed report a couple of years ago. It estimates that rebuilding just one fifth of London’s run-down estates  could produce up to 350,000 more homes. Every survey shows that residents more often than not prefer that approach. With so many tower blocks needing serious investment, surely now is the time to look at a different way of doing things. We can avoid the mistakes of the past and build in a way that breaks down barriers, strengthens communities and provides homes that people want to live in.
One reason for the sensitivity of the issue is that the approach has been so ham-fisted in the past. Areas have been improved, but existing residents have effectively been pushed out to make way for newcomers. That is the consequence of bad policy and bad decisions. In my own constituency, we are at the very early stages of a major regeneration scheme to remove 1960s blocks and replace them with low-rise, street-based, beautiful homes—and there will be more of them, even if the design makes it appear that there are fewer. That process is underpinned by a cast-iron residents’ guarantee: no one living there today will be unable to live there tomorrow, no one living there today will have to pay more tomorrow, and no one will have to move twice, which is particularly important to elderly residents and young families with children at local schools. The provision of that guarantee made it possible, immediately, for residents to engage in the process and take ownership of it, without needless anxiety. I think it is a process that could be replicated and emulated through the capital, and beyond.
Planning is nearly always a deeply divisive issue. If we are to have any hope at all of securing people’s consent to the delivery of the sheer quantity of homes that we know we must deliver, the planning system itself must become more sensitive, more open and more consensual. It needs to work with, rather than against, people and communities, who need to feel that they own the process. People know that we need more homes; if not for them, for their children. If they feel they are in the driving seat, they will be much more open to the challenges—and that, I think, needs to be absolutely at the heart of this great enterprise.

Nick Thomas-Symonds: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I congratulate him on his non-maiden speech, and I congratulate all Members who made their maiden speeches during this debate.
It is a great privilege to have been re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Torfaen, and to have the opportunity once again to speak for the eastern valley of the south Wales coalfield in the House of Commons in the days and months ahead. Torfaen, like every other part of the country, will face great challenges, and I fear that those challenges will not be met by the weak minority Government that we see before us on the Conservative Benches.
I have been a historian in the past, and I tried to find some parallels in history to give me some optimism at this time. What I found was an account of the general election of 6 December 1923, which was called by the then Conservative Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, at a time when he did not need to call an election at all. He lost his majority and his authority, and ended up making a statement in the House announcing that the Government would resign, only 42 days after the date of that election.  Perhaps we can look forward to the present Government’s staggering to their inevitable end a bit sooner than they may think.
On a more serious note, I must say that, along with my constituents—many of whom have contacted me in recent days—I send all our condolences and solidarity to those who have been affected by the terrible events of recent weeks and months: the terrorist atrocities in Manchester, at London Bridge and in Finsbury Park, and, of course, the terrible Grenfell Tower fire. I should also put on record my admiration for the great work done by the emergency services in all those instances.
Let me now turn to one of the specific topics of today’s debate, social security. I shall begin by talking about the issue of personal independence payments, because it has been raised in my surgery so frequently over the past two years. I am glad that the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work is present, because the letter that she kindly sent me back in March illustrates very well why the system is not working. The mandatory reconsideration system that has been introduced is simply not effective. During my time as a constituency Member of Parliament, I have found that not enough decisions are overturned at that stage.
The Minister’s letter states:
“Of the Mandatory Reconsiderations cleared, 42,400”—
just 15%—
“led to a change in the claimant’s award”.
As for the appeals statistics, the letter states that in the period between April 2013 and September 2016,
“125,564 appeals were lodged; and 55,495…were overturned”.
In other words, there was a 44% success rate on appeal: nearly half the number who appeal have their awards overturned. What that means is that people are not getting what they were entitled to in the first place. They are being driven through this highly stressful process of having to go all the way to a tribunal to get what they should have received in the first place. I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to get a grip on that. Whatever one’s views on the Government’s policy on social security, this shows that the system is not working as it should. They should redouble their efforts to ensure that it does work properly.
Because of the record levels of in-work poverty that have arisen in the past seven years, it is not the case anymore that we can say that a job is a route out of poverty. However, quality jobs are a route out of poverty. That is why jobs should be at the heart of our Brexit negotiations. In recent weeks, I have visited the ArvinMeritor factory that produces brakes in my constituency and seen what can be done by the workforce, management, owners and the Welsh Government working together to create a successful business. However, in Wales, we still need, at the heart of the UK Government, a proper industrial strategy that looks at specific sectors, that helps the steel sector, which would be of particular importance in south Wales, and that promotes manufacturing. Manufacturing is where we could have the quality jobs. If we want to improve productivity, the easiest way to do it is in the manufacturing sector. If we want to have export-led growth, manufacturing growth is going to be the most durable example of that. The Government should be focusing their efforts there.
Over the past two years, I have found that my constituency of Torfaen has enormous potential. The statistics provided to me by the Children’s Society show  that, of the 17,353 children who live in my constituency, 29.5% live in poverty, when housing costs are put to one side. That is because of the policies that the Government have followed over the past seven years. To unlock the potential of my constituency and others, the reality is that this Government have to go.

Andrew Slaughter: The Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), rightly pointed out yesterday that this Queen’s Speech would be a thin, anaemic document had it been for one parliamentary year, but that as a two-year programme it is a positive embarrassment. Fortunately, however, we are unlikely to have to wait two years before the electorate is able to put it and this Government out of their misery. I suppose we should be grateful that the disastrous general election campaign means that much of the Conservatives’ toxic programme for government has now been shelved, but that does not mean that we can rest easy.
The general election result in my constituency and many others was in part a rejection of the extreme hard Brexit peddled by the Conservative party. Equally, however, it is a rejection of its determination to continue the destruction of our key public services. Hammersmith residents were being asked to vote for the demolition and downgrading of their main hospital, Charing Cross; for cuts of up to 25% in schools budgets; for further cuts of £400 million to the Metropolitan police; and for the refusal by central Government to invest in genuinely affordable homes. They decisively rejected that, preferring the message of hope offered by Labour, yet there is every indication that the automaton in No. 10 will plough on with hard Brexit and austerity.
Given the tragic events of last week, I will turn now to the consequences of the Grenfell Tower fire. This is not only a terrible disaster for all those involved and the west London community; it also has implications for the safety of hundreds of thousands of families living in high-rise buildings around the UK and draws attention to the neglect of social housing over many years. Yesterday, the Prime Minister apologised for letting down the people of North Kensington, but that apology appears already to have been forgotten, as she fails to give clear commitments on some of the key issues arising from the disaster.
The Government must lead on the programme of making safe and giving reassurance to the occupants of tower blocks across the country. The issue is not just the type of cladding and its flammability, but how it is fitted, whether it has been compromised by later alterations and whether it is compatible with the existing structure. If the cause of this fire turns out—as in the case of the Shepherd’s Court fire in my constituency last August—to be a faulty electrical appliance, it will be a further indictment of the lack of any effective system of product registration and recall in the UK. Insufficient means of escape, the lack of sprinkler systems, poor maintenance, inadequate alarms, fire service cuts, and outdated building regulations—all are complex, difficult matters that need to be addressed.
My council wrote to everyone in a high-rise block in Hammersmith and Fulham the day after the Grenfell Tower fire assuring them that every one of those blocks had a fire-risk assessment, but we cannot rely on every housing provider to carry out a full inspection of its stock and to act on recommendations made, not least because they do not have the necessary funds after years of cuts. The Government must lead on those matters and enforce them.
This week, figures showed that the number of social homes being built in England has fallen by an incredible 97% since Labour left office. In one of London’s biggest housing schemes, at Battersea power station, the developer is seeking to cut the number of affordable homes from the agreed 636 to 386. That is not a coincidence. Tory Governments and councils have systematically undermined and devalued social housing over more than 30 years. I think of the example in my constituency of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates, where 750 affordable and social homes were sold off to a private developer as part of a scheme promoted by Tory councils in Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea. I will add that residents from those estates have been looking after five Grenfell Tower families who were unceremoniously dumped in a bed and breakfast hotel by Kensington and Chelsea without any means of support.
I put it to the Prime Minister this morning that the 68 so-called luxury homes that have been made available at Berkeley’s Kensington Row development were already allocated for social housing. They are not additional homes. It is of course right to give precedence to Grenfell Tower residents, but why should it be a zero-sum game in which affordable housing is not being provided? It is exactly that issue which has led to the loss of trust among Grenfell Tower residents.
The public inquiry must restore that trust, but the disaster relief, which was so appallingly handled by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, has added to the sense of gloom and suspicion across west London. I do not know why the Prime Minister could not answer this, but if it is right for the chief executive to go—the Prime Minister said it was—why is not also right for the council’s political leadership to go due to the disastrous way in which it has behaved?
I end by commending the work, effort and maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). She and my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), whose constituency used to cover north Kensington, have cared and looked after the population of that area, but that cannot be done without the necessary resources. The Prime Minister  has to make good her pledge not only to the residents of Grenfell Tower, but to everyone in need of social housing. It must again be a main form of tenure in this country with proper Government support.

Simon Clarke: It was Harold MacMillan who said:
“Except for ‘going over the top’ in war, there is hardly any experience so alarming as giving one’s maiden speech.”
I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) and for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for giving such excellent examples today. MacMillan, like me, was a Teesside MP, sitting for Stockton South, which was so ably represented by James Wharton until this election. I pay tribute to James, who was a great champion for Teesside, a staunch ally of Brexit, and an excellent constituency Member of Parliament.
What the electoral gods take away with one hand, they give back with another, and I stand here today having won Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland after 20 years of Labour control, which provides an opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, Tom Blenkinsop. Tom arrived in Parliament following the tragic death of Ashok Kumar just a few weeks before the 2010 general election. Tom is a proud Teessider, and an even prouder member of the Labour party, but he was always perfectly decent with me. Indeed, during the campaign, I found myself in a bizarre situation: the only person in my constituency who had a lower opinion of the Leader of the Opposition’s aptitude for Downing Street was in fact the sitting Labour Member of Parliament. Tom made his position perfectly clear and reconciled the situation by doing the honourable thing and resigning, and I wish him well with his return to the trade union movement.
If Tom was fire and brimstone, that was in marked contrast to Ashok Kumar, who, as Members who knew him will attest, was quiet and studious but inspired fierce loyalty from his constituents. It was inspiring for me, as a new MP, to see this high regard, and indeed love, which I found on doorsteps right across the constituency. That is a powerful testament to the importance of constituency work. That quality is also true of his predecessor, the last Conservative Member for the seat, Michael Bates, now a long-standing Minister in the other place. I pay particular tribute to Michael, who joined me at 6 am in Coulby Newham, in the rain, on election day, for a dawn raid. That was typical of the man: unassuming, shrewd, funny and passionately committed to public service.
So what is this constituency that inspires such loyalty from those who represent it in this place? For me, it has the happy advantage of being home; it is where I was born and where I grew up. I did so in Marton, in Middlesbrough, a few hundred yards from the birthplace of Captain James Cook, and I can think of few better ambassadors for a new global Britain than the man who discovered large parts of our world. Cook’s cottage stands in the grounds of Stewart park, which was, in turn, originally the grounds of Marton hall, home to Henry Bolckow, the pioneering ironmaster and Middlesbrough’s first mayor and Member of Parliament. He was one of a generation of industrialists who prompted Gladstone to christen Middlesbrough England’s “infant  Hercules”, and the proud industrial heritage of my constituency continues today. We have world-leading engineering firms, the iconic brand of British Steel, mining and the industrial might of Teesport. Lest we forget, the north-east is the only net exporting region of England. We can add to that the huge potential of the new South Tees Development Corporation, which is being introduced under our new Conservative mayor of the Tees Valley, Ben Houchen.
That is the narrative I am keen to champion in this place: a successful north-east and a successful Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland as part of a successful UK after Brexit. We need to challenge the tired narrative of decline and betrayal, which at its worst has proved self-fulfilling and has held Teesside back. Anyone who knows my constituency will attest to the fact that we have more than our fair share of social challenges, with lives blighted by the circumstances in which they begin. We face stubborn unemployment; poor education outcomes; family breakdown; drug and alcohol abuse; and communities that feel isolated and ignored, such as Loftus, Liverton and Lingdale. This is a powerful moral mission worthy of any generation. As a Conservative, passionate about helping people to help themselves, I am proud that our Government have a strong record in this area, but it is clear that there is much more to do.
That is not the whole, or indeed the end, of the story. The communities that face those challenges also throw up so many quiet community heroes, such as the vicar of Hemlington, Robert Desics, and the members of the Loftus ACCORD group, whom I had the pleasure to meet during the campaign. They support charitable activities, ranging from providing summer holidays for deprived kids who would not otherwise have one to backing the elderly. So many of my campaign team would be encompassed in that group; they serve quietly but dutifully as magistrates, they help to support Gisborough priory, and they manage gardening clubs and local primary schools, and they are the real heroes.
There is another side of the constituency, too—the side that people who do not know it may not appreciate so well. I am talking about Roseberry Topping, the beautiful hill that Cook climbed as a child; the North York Moors, to Scaling Dam and Cowbar; the East Cleveland coast, viewed from Brotton or from the hills above Skelton, with its thriving Victorian seaside resort of Saltburn; the prosperous market town of Guisborough; and the affluent southern suburbs of Middlesbrough itself.
As with any constituency, there are competing narratives and competing truths. The fact that there are so many positives about Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland has led to massive recent housing development. Some lovely new developments have been built, but we urgently need to ensure that the accompanying infrastructure follows and that the best possible use is made of brownfield land. Transport links will be a key part of my work in this place, be it linking rural communities in East Cleveland or ensuring that the traffic in south Middlesbrough can flow properly.
Middlesbrough’s motto is Erimus—we shall be. In closing, let me say that I am immensely proud and grateful to have the opportunity to champion my area on the next stage of its remarkable journey.

Bernard Jenkin: It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David—albeit fleetingly, perhaps. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). I did not agree with all her points, but I thought that the collaborative tone of her response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy set the tone that the public want and expect to see in the House.
I commend the Gracious Speech. I am not going to labour the point on Brexit, except to make two brief points. First, the ex-remainers who continue to increase the demands that we should make on our European partners for concessions as we leave the European Union are actually making it harder to get any deal at all, because the more we demand and the more concessions we want, the more we will be accused of cherry-picking. The EU has made it very clear that—to paraphrase Michel Barnier—we cannot enjoy the benefits of membership and not be in the EU. Perhaps the ex-remainers have a plan to make so many demands that will not be granted to us in the hope that the country will decide, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t leave the EU after all.” I put it to them that if there is any idea that we are going to try to reverse the decision taken by the British people in the referendum, that would be an incendiary decision for the House to take.
Secondly, we keep hearing about a cliff-edge. What is this cliff-edge? It seems to me to be a continuation of the fear campaign that is now so discredited. There is obviously not going to be a comprehensive trade agreement within two years—to that extent, we are not going to have a deal—but are we seriously suggesting that the  EU is so insane that it will not make the same kind of arrangements on aviation, data protection, intellectual property, customs facilitation or product recognition on standards that it makes with 100 or 150 other countries with which it does not have a trade deal? I prefer to regard the EU as a bit more constructive than that; indeed, the EU has said that it wants to be constructive and does not want to punish us. If we leave without a comprehensive trade deal, we will have an agreement about lots of detailed things that will enable the goods to flow across the Northern Ireland border, just as the goods flow across the border between Canada and the United States without the lorries stopping, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) said.
I commend the Gracious Speech because I am delighted to see that it contains a draft patient safety Bill, which is the result of a 2015 recommendation on clinical incident investigation by the Public Administration Committee, which I chaired at the time. I had hoped to see a draft Bill on reform of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which the Committee described as “stuck in time” in our report entitled, “Time for a People's Ombudsman Service”. If we are going to introduce a public advocate for public disasters, is it going to be a statutory body? Would it not be a good idea to combine ombudsman reform with a new public advocate statutory function?
I wish to talk about the response to the Grenfell Tower fire and to raise some issues relating to how a public inquiry could be established. Just this year, in February, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee produced a report called “Lessons still to be learned from the Chilcot Inquiry”. We drew on previous reports produced under the chairmanship of Dr Tony Wright. Public confidence in public inquiries is not to be taken for granted. As well as Chilcot, we looked at other inquiries that lost public confidence, including the child sex abuse inquiry, and at the length of time that it took for the Saville inquiry in Northern Ireland to report. We recommended that a public inquiry should not be established unless the House has voted for it, on an amendable motion dealing with the remit, the timetable and the chairmanship, and that before such a motion is debated a special Select Committee should be established to consider those matters and report back to the House.
Everyone wants to set up this inquiry as quickly as possible in response to public anger, which is very understandable, but so many public inquiries are set up in haste before their terms of reference are properly considered. The Leveson inquiry, for example, has been regretted because not enough thought was put into it. I do not belong to the tradition of democracy that believes that the elected Government are necessarily the fount of all wisdom, however much I admire the Prime Minister herself.

Oliver Dowden: May I begin by congratulating those new Members who have made excellent maiden speeches today? I wish to join other Members in paying tribute to the many people who died in the Grenfell Tower disaster. I also pay tribute to my constituents, particularly those who, through Borehamwood synagogue, have made an extraordinary effort in fundraising and in the provision of goods and services to help those most in need. It really is an example of the whole community coming together.
I would like today to address the question of housing. I am a proud capitalist. I believe that capitalism is the most efficient way of allocating resources and that it is what has driven prosperity in our society for so many generations. However, in order to believe in capitalism, one must first either have capital or have a reasonable expectation that one will be able to acquire it. The problem we have with housing is reflected in a wider problem of the capitalist system in this country. A failure or an inability to expect to acquire one’s own home would lead us to question our interest in maintaining this capitalist system, which is so effective for our country. In my remarks, I wish to address how we can deal with that problem.
First, let me say that, as a Government, we have made progress on this matter. I am proud of some of the  things that I did during my time in Downing Street as an adviser to the Prime Minister. For example, our work on allowing the conversion of offices to residential property has increased supply. Help to Buy has allowed many families without a sufficient deposit to acquire their first house. We have also made considerable progress in deregulation, which has allowed people to extend their own homes. People do not recognise it, but deregulation is a way of increasing supply in the housing market, because it allows them to expand their own home and provide more space for themselves and their families.
Clearly, though, there is a lot more to do. At the heart of this matter lies the conflict between the generations, which is so evident in my own constituency. We are very fortunate in Hertsmere. We have a beautiful constituency, which has built-up areas and green belt land—80% is green belt. There is an understandable reluctance to encroach on that green belt land. Certainly, it is essential that we maintain and protect that land. If we are to do that, we have to look creatively at how we can draw consent for further house building.
Members have raised a number of valid points in this debate. First, we have to get consent for housing, which means maintaining the central role of councils, which know where housing can be best placed. It is right that the housing White Paper maintains that central role for local government. Secondly, we need to ensure that we get the infrastructure in place. We cannot expect communities to agree to additional housing if they do not have the schools, hospitals, roads and railways to go with it. In places such as Borehamwood where there has been a lot of housing, one frustration is the lack of infrastructure to go with it. We need to maintain pressure on that.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the former candidate for Mayor of London, that we should not overlook aesthetics. Low-rise housing is denser than high-rise housing, but it is much more pleasant for people to live in. Certainly, one regret from my time at No. 10 was that we started to pioneer the idea of replacing high-rise with low-rise—[Interruption.] I should hasten to add that I was an adviser to the Prime Minister. If we continue with that agenda, we can get more buy-in for more housing.
We should look at design, because people are much more willing to accept housing if it is aesthetically pleasing. People will forgo some green space if it is replaced by something good. What people do not want is green space being replaced by ugly urban sprawl. Certainly, I will continue to resist that ugly urban sprawl, as I want to ensure that we maintain the character and unique charms of our towns and villages. If we can buy in communities with better design and local consent, we can get more housing, thereby ensuring that young people have a genuine hope of accessing capital. We would reinvigorate their faith in the capitalist system and ensure that, once again, we have a generation of home owners. That is what brought me into politics in the first place. My parents were able to buy their own social housing through Right to Buy. They got their first stake. The next generations must get that first stake too. If we are creative about this, we can do it and provide opportunities for the next generation.

Kevin Hollinrake: It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow such excellent maiden speeches from Members on both sides of the House. I was here to listen to the tremendous contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke)—the first, I am sure, of many in this House.
I must draw the House’s attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have been involved in the property market for 25 years and am still involved. I am deeply passionate about it, and I am very pleased by the Government’s clear and ambitious plans to increase house building by 1 million homes between 2015 and 2020, and by 500,000 more by 2022. Those are very ambitious plans.
I am delighted to see that the shadow Secretary of State is back with us in the Chamber. I tried to intervene on him earlier to question one or two of the facts that Opposition Members keep repeating. They keep saying that since 2010 house building has fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, but the House of Commons Library shows that some 100,000 houses were built in 2009-10, and 153,000 in 2016. Where do these figures come from? The claim is that affordable housing building is at a 24-year-low—the shadow Secretary of State can intervene on me on this point—but we know that in the past six years we have built 304,900 affordable homes, and in the last six years of the Labour Government, 294,000 affordable homes were built. Members can choose their own opinions, but they cannot choose their own facts.

Wendy Morton: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) for so graciously giving me a lesson in parliamentary brevity. I will endeavour to be quick so that the Front Benchers have adequate time for the wind-ups.
I echo other hon. Members in expressing my sentiments and condolences in view of the tragic events at Grenfell Tower recently.
Today it has been a pleasure to listen to the maiden speeches of, I think, seven hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. I recall giving my own maiden speech two years ago during the debates on the Queen’s Gracious Speech; I think I chose the enterprise debate on that occasion.
I welcome the Gracious Speech and the Government’s legislative priorities for the next two years, particularly the focus on recognising and grasping the opportunities ahead, as well as tackling the challenges we face as a country. Leaving the EU means that we are respecting the result of last year’s referendum. That is what my constituents in Aldridge-Brownhills expect. We need to get Brexit right. In doing so, we need to take the public with us and have their support.
We also need to continue to build and strengthen the strong economy that creates jobs, opportunities and aspiration. Since 2010, more than 2.9 million people are back in work—something to be commended. I particularly welcome the increase in the national living wage, the space industry Bill, the automated and electric vehicles Bill, and reforms to technical education. This is all part of building a world-class education system and, importantly, the skills that we need for today and for the future—developing the traditional skills and trades that we often talk about in this place, as well as the new ones that arise in conjunction with the new, emerging technologies. I hope that businesses in the west midlands and in my constituency have opportunities to play their part in developing those too.
Today’s debate focuses particularly on housing. There is welcome news from the Government that the affordable homes programme will become more flexible. We have the homelessness reduction taskforce, building on the Homeless Reduction Act 2017, which was taken through this place in the previous Parliament. It was spearheaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in a private Member’s Bill one Friday, but he garnered so much support from Members on both sides of this Chamber that it could go all the way through the House of Lords and become an Act of Parliament.
Many of us will remember the first time we bought or rented our own home. For most of us, it is a huge step, and for many, a huge financial commitment, but a dream that has come true. I hope that through these measures we are able to make more people’s dreams come true, so that with Help to Buy they too can have the chance to buy that first home. This is where affordability matters more than ever before. I remember that affordability mattered when we bought our first home 20-plus years ago, and it is still an issue today.
I welcome the recent focus on using public sector land for building on. I hope that we continue with this so that we can prioritise housing on public sector land and brownfield sites—something that my hon. Friend the new Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) recognised in his speech. In the west midlands, as you may be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, our new metro mayor, Andy Street, has a very sensible approach to this—brownfield first. My constituents feel that that is an excellent way of tackling the housing crisis by putting those brownfield sites first and unlocking the potential to develop on them, thus protecting our precious green belt and green open spaces. There are also welcome measures in the Queen’s Speech to promote fairness and transparency in housing with the draft tenant fees Bill, which is also to be welcomed.
I am conscious of the time, but I ask for your generosity, Mr Deputy Speaker, in indulging me in making one request; I hope the Minister will also be generous. During the last Parliament, my name was drawn in the private Members’ Bills ballot, and I introduced the  Crown Tenancies Bill. I believe it had some support from the Government, so in considering housing in the round, might that be looked at again? Its purpose was to provide, for Crown tenancies, assured tenancies for the purposes of the Housing Act 1988.

Debbie Abrahams: It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I welcome the new Secretary of State to his place.
This has been an extensive debate. There were 24 speakers, and I want to thank them all. I congratulate all the new Members who made their maiden speeches, including the hon. Members for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) and for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), but I particularly pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who spoke so movingly about the devastating effect of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. I know that she will go from strength to strength, and will continue to represent her constituents in the fantastic way she has during the past week.
I, too, extend my condolences to everyone affected by the fire, and to all those affected by the terror attacks in Manchester and at London bridge and Finsbury Park. It seems to be a sign of our times that, in the space of just a few weeks, we should have faced these horrific events.
On behalf of the more than 50% of people who voted against austerity in the general election just two weeks ago, I want to express my profound disappointment at the content of the Gracious Speech. After delivering Brexit and building a stronger economy, it refers to making our country fairer, echoing the Prime Minister’s warm words on the steps of Downing Street about building a country for everyone. Frankly, this just does not stack up. As a result of seven years of austerity under this Government, we have escalating levels of poverty, including 7.4 million people who are in working households, 4 million children and 4.2 million disabled people, while one in seven of our pensioners are living in poverty, which is an increase of 300,000 since 2010. At the same time, there have been excesses in boardroom pay, with Britain’s top bosses being paid, on average, 312 times more than a care worker, 165 times more than a nurse, 140 times more than a teacher and 132 times more than a police officer. It is all right to praise the work of the emergency services, but let us give them a decent pay rise.
The richest 1,000 people own more wealth than the poorest 40%, and this Government’s tax and spending policies have reinforced, rather than addressed, such inequalities. The Conservative manifesto promised more of the same—carrying on regardless of the pain and suffering that so many people have endured and are still enduring. The Conservatives have broken promise after promise: there was no mention in the manifesto of raising living standards, in spite of real wages being at 2007 levels in real terms, and there was no reference to raising the national living wage, in spite of one in five workers being in low-paid jobs. Instead, it boasted that corporation tax will continue to be cut in spite of the fact that it is already the lowest in the G7. Shockingly, it  pledged to erode further the social security safety net for older people by removing the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners and the state pension triple lock, while promising a dementia tax that people, if they could not afford it and were unfortunate enough to need home care, would have to pay by selling their home. The Queen’s Speech mentioned none of those Tory manifesto promises, so I would be grateful to the Secretary of State if he confirmed that, given the position of their coalition partners on these issues, they will not now be delivered.
Given that the Government are currently in breach of their own Pensions Act 2014, will the Secretary of State confirm when they will respond to the Cridland report and guarantee that there will be no further increase in the state pension age? Further to that, there was no mention in the Queen’s Speech of the plight of the 2.6 million WASPI women, including the 4,000 in my constituency who have been affected by the accelerated increase in their state pension age, many of whom had no notice of the increase and many of whom have been left destitute. I have heard cases of women in their 60s who have had to sell up everything and who are sofa-surfing. What will the Government do to address their plight? We are the fifth richest country in the world. Those women have contributed to society and it is scandalous that they are being treated in this way. The Government must act urgently to address the WASPI issue, reflect on the desperate circumstances that many WASPI women are in and put in place mitigation.
The Government seem oblivious to the escalation in child poverty over the past seven years, with 1 million more children expected to fall into poverty by 2020. They seem unconcerned by the direct and immediate effect that that is having on those children’s health and wellbeing, let alone their long-term life chances. The Tory manifesto pledged to cut free school meals. While I am pleased that that has been dropped, will the Secretary of State confirm what specific measures are in place to address the rise in child poverty and to ameliorate its effects? Will the Government agree to exempt lone parents with children under two from the benefit cap, given today’s High Court judgment? Where is the legislation or other measures to deal immediately with low-paid work and to ensure that work always pays, given that low pay is a key driver of worker and child poverty?
Universal credit, as we have heard in this debate, is failing, from its shambolic roll-out to the escalating costs and ludicrous design flaws, including the so-called “digital by default” and the six-week “long hello” before people get their first payment. During the election, I spoke to a constituent who was told she would have to wait six weeks and then had another four weeks added on top. That is not good enough. Of course, there is also the mess around having four-weekly as opposed to monthly payments. Some people have two payments in one month and then have to reapply because they reach the amount they are allowed.

David Gauke: It is a great pleasure to conclude this debate on the Gracious Speech. I thank all hon. Members from all parties who have contributed. Members from all parts of the United Kingdom have covered a wide range of subjects and it has been a very good and insightful debate.
I will not respond to every Member who has spoken, but I will respond particularly to those who made their maiden speeches, beginning with the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). It is difficult to imagine that there has ever been a Member of Parliament who has faced such a daunting challenge in their constituency in their first few days in office, and she has conducted herself with great sensitivity and energy. She made a very moving speech earlier today in which she spoke of her constituency generally, but she particularly and rightly focused on Grenfell Tower, the families she has met and the tales of the desperate situations that her constituents have faced. I congratulate her on the way she spoke and the way she has conducted herself as a Member of Parliament.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on an excellent maiden speech. He spoke powerfully about his constituency and his particular constituency focuses and showed his depth of knowledge of the borderlands. I also noted that he managed to deliver a perfectly timed speech, which is an attribute that I am sure will attract the attention of the Whips. I suspect he will be much in demand in future months.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), who spoke of his town and told us much about its history. As a former soldier, he has an appropriate background for an Aldershot Member of Parliament. He paid tribute to his predecessor, Gerald Howarth, who was a good friend to many of us here. On that note, I also congratulate the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), who spoke about the tolerance and diversity in London and within his constituency, and about his own family’s story. He also paid generous tribute to David Burrowes, with whom I shared an office for five years and who is a good friend. I welcome the opportunity to wish him well, as the hon. Gentleman did.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) on an excellent speech. He spoke warmly of all of his many predecessors and demonstrated a great love of Teesside and a desire to represent it as the first Conservative MP for his constituency for some time. They did not give maiden speeches, but I welcome back to the House the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), with whom I suspect I will debate on many occasions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). I also thank the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary for her welcome to me in my new position. I congratulate her on her reappointment. Today may mark one of our friendlier debates, but I hope that we can have a constructive working relationship in the period ahead.
I referred to the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Kensington. Clearly, Grenfell Tower has cast a large shadow over our debate. There have been several excellent  contributions, particularly that of the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who previously represented that part of London. It is a terrible tragedy and all our thoughts are with those affected and the families who are grieving.
Our priority is to ensure that the people affected by the fire get the financial help they need. We have staff on the ground who are handling people’s benefits claims sensitively and flexibly. For example, they are ensuring that payments continue if appointments are missed and that jobseeking requirements are suspended for as long as needed. The Department for Work and Pensions has also made sure that people’s benefits will not be affected by payments from the discretionary fund. The local authority has assigned key workers to affected households to ensure that they have continuity of support—wraparound support—and we are working closely with them to provide benefit advice and support.
Money is available from the £5 billion discretionary fund to meet funeral costs. The Department for Work and Pensions administers funeral expenses payments and the local authority also has funds to support people who cannot afford funeral costs. It is important that all parts of government work together to provide the necessary support for the people of Grenfell Tower and the surrounding areas.
The debate on Grenfell Tower has also shone a light on the wider issue of housing. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government set out the Government’s position. It is worth reminding the House that we have a proud record since 2010. We have overseen the building of nearly 1 million new homes and helped around 400,000 households to get on the property ladder through Help to Buy. However, with housing becoming increasingly unaffordable, there is much more to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) made that point. We have set out our strategy in the housing White Paper and we are introducing a Bill to ban unfair tenant fees.
We will drive that forward by investing £7.1 billion through the affordable homes programme, implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and continuing to support the regeneration of housing estates. We have not built enough homes in this country for generations. We need to build more of the right homes in the right places and ensure that the housing market works for all parts of our community.
Let me deal with some of the welfare issues that have been raised in the debate. Our welfare reforms are restoring fairness and supporting people into work. Having a welfare system that offers work for those who can, help for those who could and care for those who cannot is part of our plan to build a fair society for all. The Government have improved the chances of finding employment and we will continue to build on that achievement.
The employment rate stands at a joint record high of 74.8% while the employment rate for women is at a joint record high of 70.2%.

Helen Whately: I completely agree with my hon. Friend. In addition to the fantastic acute hospitals, community and cottage hospitals are really important. Patients who do not need acute care can be looked after closer to home and be given a different sort of care in the environment of a local community hospital such as the one in his constituency or Faversham cottage hospital in my own, which is deeply loved and enormously valued by the community.
The new hospital that I am asking for will take time, so it will not fix the immediate challenges that the NHS is facing in Kent, but now is the time to look to the future. It has been suggested that the STP consultation is looking merely at the next five years. That is totally inadequate; it is far too short a timeframe. We need to put politics aside and think further ahead than the next parliamentary term, just as we are putting party allegiance aside for this campaign. I am pleased to be working with my colleague, the new hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). She is taking up this campaign from her predecessor, Sir Julian Brazier, who fought hard for many years for Kent & Canterbury hospital.
In conclusion, I shall turn to the specific requests that I want to make of the Minister. I ask him to note that Kent & Canterbury hospital has strong support in the community, represented here today by members of CHEK, and across the political parties. I ask him to look closely at the temporary changes to services, to challenge the hospital on its contingency plans and to make absolutely  sure that, in the short term, these services are safe for patients. I ask him to ensure that these changes do not become permanent. I also ask him to look favourably on the case for a medical school in Kent, and to ensure that the STP consultation takes into account the connection between the medical school proposal and the decision about acute sites.
I have been told many times that one barrier to the idea of a new Canterbury hospital is a lack of capital. I ask my hon. Friend to help us here. More capital has been promised for the NHS, so will he make it clear to the local NHS leaders driving the process that if they, and we in Kent, can make the case, capital will be available. There is a risk that the consultation on Kent’s STP will be presented to the public with no option for an acute hospital at Canterbury. If none of the options propose keeping acute services at Canterbury, it cannot be called a true consultation.
Finally, will my hon. Friend please require STP leaders to look to the long-term, to be ambitious in their plans, and to aim for excellence? There is an opportunity here for Kent—specifically east Kent—to bring an end to the drift of services away from the area, to downgrading, and to the struggle to recruit and retrain staff. Instead, Kent could become a centre of excellence, making the most of the combined assets of the NHS, local universities and the strong life sciences research sector in east Kent to offer people in Kent brilliant patient care, to develop innovative treatments and pathways, and to set an example for the whole country of how we can provide excellent, sustainable healthcare.

Philip Dunne: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship as Deputy Speaker, Sir David. I hope that that will not necessarily be as temporary as suggested by Mr Speaker when he sought the leave of the House to appoint you. It is also a pleasure to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who has been on her toes in securing Mr Speaker’s consent to have this debate so early in the parliamentary Session. I am pleased that she has secured the support of many of her constituents, some of whom have come to witness her championing their interests in relation to Kent & Canterbury hospital. She has done that not just this evening, but consistently over the past few months with our mutual friend Sir Julian Brazier, who is sadly no longer with us in the House. However, I congratulate his replacement, the new hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield).
I worked closely with Sir Julian when we were Ministers in the Ministry of Defence, and both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent have been doughty champions of the population of Mid Kent, particularly those in the areas surrounding Canterbury, in fighting for healthcare services given the challenges that she quite properly describes at Canterbury hospital. I pay tribute to them for that, and they are doing the right thing in ensuring that such issues are brought to Ministers’ attention. I know that she wrote to the Secretary of State only last week, and I am pleased to hear her arguments, which were so eloquently put today. I will say what I can in response to the questions and challenges that she posed, but I must say at the outset that I do not stand here tonight with all the  answers to all the questions because, as she will appreciate, many of the things that she is calling for are decisions that will be taken and led by clinicians in Kent. It is not for Ministers to prescribe the provision of services in Kent. Many such decisions will take place over a period of time; it will not be instant decision making.
I will start my response by providing a little context for what has happened over the past few years, and this week in particular. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the board of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust agreed to relocate some services from its Canterbury site, Kent & Canterbury Hospital, this Monday. The change happened overnight from Sunday into Monday and came in response to legitimate concerns raised by both the General Medical Council and Health Education England over a period stretching back to as early as 2014, when they raised concerns about the standard of training available at the Canterbury site, in particular the quality and safety of junior doctor training.
The situation was brought to a head following a visit in March this year. The recruitment and retention of key medical staff has been an ongoing challenge for the trust, and there is a shortage of consultants to provide the required training and supervision of junior doctors posted to Kent & Canterbury hospital. On Sunday 18 June, 38 junior doctors were reallocated from Kent & Canterbury to other sites operated by the trust. The removal of these junior doctors has required the trust to relocate some of the services it provides, to ensure safe and sustainably staffed services for patients.
My hon. Friend’s constituents will still receive good service provision. The clinical commissioning group has facilitated this development by acquiring some 40 additional care packages to support effective discharge from the Ashford and Margate sites, to free up some 75 beds to allow for this temporary service change to take place, along with an additional 20 ambulances, supplied through SECAmb—the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust—to cover the additional journey times from the Canterbury area. Replacement services at nearby hospitals in Ashford and Margate are being monitored to ensure that they are safe and effective, given the additional pressure on those hospitals from the move.
Unfortunately, I cannot say today how long this temporary closure will last. The GMC has made it clear that
“if there is evidence that appropriate and sustainable action has been taken to make the Urgent Care Centre a safe environment for doctors in training once more, HEE will review reallocating trainees to the site”.
No decision has been made about the long-term future of the service and no decision will be made without full public consultation. I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance.

Philip Dunne: One of my ministerial responsibilities is to support the Secretary of State in having an oversight of trusts that are in special measures. The East Kent trust has been in special measures and is currently in financial special measures, so I take a close interest in what is happening in that trust. In view of her request and the events that have happened this week, I assure her that I will take a particular interest to ensure that the existing facilities at Ashford and Margate are up to scratch to cope with the increased demand they will undoubtedly have to manage.
I want to make it clear to the House and to the representatives on both sides who look after constituents in Kent that this issue is about maintaining the supervision of junior medical staff and ensuring that we have safe staffing levels for patients from central Kent; it is not about clinical practice or the competence of the hard-working staff in the hospital. I have been assured that before taking this decision every effort was made to identify appropriate senior staff cover from neighbouring trusts. The challenge has been to ensure that an adequate number of consultants were on duty at Kent & Canterbury hospital to allow junior doctors to have senior colleagues to refer to in the event of issues they felt uncomfortable dealing with. The problem that the trust has had is that it has been overly reliant on locum consultant cover in the hospital and there has been an inability to recruit to substantive posts in the hospital over a prolonged period, which has given rise to this concern on the part of HEE and the GMC that the training conditions for junior doctors were not adequate. That is what has led to this decision, rather than any criticism of the individual doctors or other staff members in the hospital.
I am also assured that the concerns of both HEE and the GMC are being addressed as quickly as possible. That will form part of any public consultation that follows from development of the STP that is being worked up for the area.
I will not go into any great detail about the specifics of what has happened over the last few days as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent has already done so, but our expectation is that this temporary relocation is likely to affect approximately 50 of the 900 patients who visit Kent & Canterbury hospital each and every day. It is important to recognise that there has not been a full A&E unit at Kent & Canterbury hospital since 2005, when services at the trust were reconfigured, and it was established as an emergency care centre. Trauma and general surgical emergency cases had already been sent to sites in Margate and Ashford for some time prior to the recent temporary changes, and I believe it was in 2016 that the emergency care centre itself was turned into an urgent care centre, which again had an impact on services at that time.
I am advised that local NHS leaders have fully explored the risks of temporarily relocating services and have put in place mitigating action and contingency plans when required. The decision has been an exercise in the balance of risk: it is clearly not desirable, and nor is it either common or unique, for the regulators to take action such as this when they have concerns about both patient and staff safety, and it is not a decision taken lightly or comfortably, but the trust has come to the view that the risk to patient safety outweighed maintaining the status quo and seeking to continue with, frankly, unsustainable levels of senior support.
My hon. Friend rightly raised concerns that this might presage a future closure of the site, and I want to try to reassure her: the trust board has been left in no doubt whatsoever that it should not regard this as a step on the road to a permanent solution and that it needs to consider the requirements of the population of mid-Kent in the round when looking at the provision for the future to be undertaken through the STP. The hon. Lady raised a perfectly reasonable concern that the STP horizon of five years is not long enough. If the STP were to consider a more wide-ranging reconfiguration, that absolutely would have to look at the long-term horizon for healthcare provision in the area and not just at meeting the immediate objectives of the next five years.

Philip Dunne: I was going to come on to the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent about both allocation of capital and the possibility of a new hospital. I was starting to develop the point that this matter needs to be assessed in light of the overall requirements of the healthcare economy of mid-Kent and the East Kent trust through the STP process. Capital is currently constrained throughout the NHS. As hon. Members will know, in the March Budget we announced a capital allocation of some £325 million over the next three years to support the first phase of STPs. Fairly shortly, we should have made sufficient progress in deciding which of the STP proposals should be supported to secure that capital. Other capital pots are available to the NHS for what we refer to as business as usual, and there are always opportunities for trusts to make capital proposals to the NHS.
Right now, it is not appropriate for me to explain the basis on which future capital allocation decisions will be made. One can look to the recent past to identify some significant new hospital builds that are now in progress. There is currently a significant capital investment not far around the coast from Kent, in Brighton, and there is another closer to my constituency, in Sandwell in Birmingham. Such builds are few and far between, and bearing in mind the kind of major capital investment we are talking about, I think both my hon. Friends from different parts of Kent are arguing for space to undertake a study to consider whether a major build is appropriate to meet the needs of the mid-Kent population.
Generally, as can be identified from the two significant builds that are currently under way, which have been allocated hundreds of millions of pounds of capital  each, a certain density of population is required to be served. Such builds are therefore most likely to occur in major cities rather than in less densely populated areas. That said, it is not for me to make suggestions as to what would or would not be appropriate. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent to discuss the matter, as I know she has already, with her STP leaders. If there is a desire among Kent MPs and the Kent community to consider whether in future a more holistic approach to satisfying healthcare needs should be taken in the county as a whole, perhaps my hon. Friend should work in conjunction with other hon. Members.
The right forums are the STPs, which are bringing together NHS providers and commissioners from throughout their regions to try to arrange provision to meet the future healthcare needs of their populations. Whether or not my hon. Friend is successful in persuading the STP that a new hospital in Canterbury is the right solution, that is a matter for her to take forward with the STP. Such an effort would carry more weight were it supported by other colleagues from the area.